Description

This rare cabinet on stand belongs to a very small group of pieces of lacquer veneered furniture from the last quarter of the seventeenth century. An enormous interest in Chinese and Japanese imported works of art grew among highly wealthy collectors during this period. In particular, members of the royal court.

Lacquer screens were sliced and cut into veneers and fixed to mirrors, side tables and cabinets. In this case, the cabinet maker has chosen the leaves from a Kangxi period folding table screen of the highest quality and created a cabinet around it. A near identical cabinet, but with a different interior and the original stand, can be found in Ham House and is mentioned in the 1679 inventory. Recent research by Adam Bowett has suggested that the cabinet at Ham could be linked to the royal maker Gerrit Jensen. It is possible that our cabinet was made by the same maker who worked extensively at Ham for the first Duke of Lauderdale.

The interior of the cabinet has a traditional layout based on Japanese cabinets but has been decorated in a charming if slightly naïve style. Japanning (European decoration in the style of Oriental lacquer) was a popular domestic pastime for ladies and can be traced to the design book of Stalker and Parker (1688) among others and it is likely that this is the case with our cabinet. Fantastic turrets and domed palaces jostle with Chinese robed figures and their random placement indicates picking from a pattern book rather than professional work.

[Gerrit Jensen: Royal Cabinet Maker, Adam Bowett (Northall Press, 2023)]