After dinner, during this period, it was common for men to remain at the table for port, cigars, and numerous toasts, where, as Congreve observed, women ‘retired to their tea and scandal after dinner.’ This presented the men with the opportunity to use the chamber pots provided in the dinning room. The first floor, or piano nobile, was the most important public room and it was here that any works of art possessed by the family would have been displayed. This room would have been used for entertaining on a grand scale.
Half moon Console Table, Satinwood, Dublin, Late 18th century.
Hand painted with flowers, towers, castles and archaeological ruins.
Curragh Chase, Adare, Co. Limerick, 1795 by Jeremiah Hodges Mulcahy (1804 – 1889). NGI.
Portrait by Gilbert Stuart of Mr John Lees.
John Lees was appointed Secretary of the Irish Post Office in 1774. An Post Collection.
ALSO ON THE FIRST FLOOR: