A GEORGE I PARCEL-GILT AND WALNUT BUREAU-CABINET

CIRCA 1725

Details

A GEORGE I PARCEL-GILT AND WALNUT BUREAU-CABINET
Circa 1725
The foliate-carved swan's neck cresting terminating in flowerheads and centering a foliate-carved cartouche above a floral basket, above a pair of bevelled glazed doors with a foliate edge, the slant-lid with a reading ledge, enclosing a fitted interior of various drawers and pigeonholes centering a mirrored door flanked by half-turned columnar-faced secret compartments above two short and three long graduated bomb drawers, the sides with brass carrying handles, with flower-carved base, on bracket feet, with allover herringbone inlay, doors probably originally with mirrored plates
100in. (255cm.) high, 43in. (109cm.) wide, 22in. (56cm.) deep

Provenance

Acquired from Mallett's, London in 1935.

Lot Essay

This bureau-cabinet's remarkable bomb base fashioned after contemporary French examples corresponds to that on a bureau bearing the signature of the cabinetmaker Samuel Bennett (d.1741), who traded at the 'Sign of the Cabinet' in London's Lotherbury Street (see C.Gilbert, Pictorial Dictionary of Marked London Furniture 1700-1840, Leeds, 1996, p.106, fig.114), while its voluted cornice with a golden escutcheon, after the French picturesque manner illustrated in William Jones's The Gentleman and Builder's Companion, 1739, features in another of Bennett's bureaux now in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London (C.Gilbert, op.cit, figs.13 and 14). Further bomb examples mounted with gilt-metal embellishments to the shaped front corners include one illustrated in M.Harris and Sons, A Catalogue and Index of Old Furniture and Works of Decorative Art, London, n.d.(c.1927), part II, p.163. Two others illustrated in L.Synge, Great English Furniture, London, 1991, p.49, fig.43 and p.50, fig.44, the first sold from the Hochschild Collection, Sotheby's London, 1 December 1978, lot 13. Another is illustrated in F.L.Hinckley, A Directory of Queen Anne, Early Georgian and Chippendale Furniture, New York, 1971, p.245, pl.440. The form also exists in japanned examples such as one sold Sotheby's London, 5 May 1989, lot 21 and another sold Sotheby's New York, 25 Januaary 1997, lot 221.