He designed furniture, mantelpieces, ceilings, chandeliers, doors and mural ornament with equal felicity, and as an artist in plaster work in low relief he was unapproached in his day.
[1] He delighted in urns and sphinxes and interlaced gryphons, in amorini with bows and torches, in trophies of musical instruments and martial weapons, and in flowering arabesques which were always graceful if sometimes rather thin.
[1] The centre panels of his walls and ceilings were often occupied by classical and pastoral subjects painted by Cipriani, Angelica Kauffman or her husband Antonio Zucchi, and sometimes by himself.
These nymphs and amorini, with their disengaged and riant air and classic grace, were not infrequently used as copies for painting upon that satinwood furniture of the last quarter of the 18th century which has never been surpassed for dainty elegance, and for the popularity of which Pergolesi was in large measure responsible; they were even reproduced in marquetry.
[1] Pergolesi likewise designed silver plate, and many of his patterns are almost instinctively attributed to the brothers Adam by the makers and purchasers of modern reproductions.