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Lot Essay
This remarkable Canton enamel and black and gold lacquered writing desk/dressing-table dates from the mid-18th Century and is likely to have been commissioned by the East India merchant Thomas Leche, for his wife. The bureau is enamelled with birds and insects in brilliantly-coloured flowered landscapes after the fashion popularised by Messrs Stalker and Parker's, Treatise of Japanning, Varnishing and Guilding, 1688; while its fall displays a flower-framed vignette of Chinese figures in a pavilioned pleasure garden. The chest, with fitted interior and carrying handles, is supported on a serpentine frame with japanned palm-flowers and foliage, which was executed around 1800 and is in keeping with the chest's fretted and flowered base. A pair of related stand-supported bureaux, with fitted dressing-glasses, were described as 'Union suits', when repaired in 1739 for the Duke of Atholl by cabinet-maker John Hodson of Frith Street, see A. Coleridge, John Hodson and Some Cabinet-makers at Blair Castle, The Connoisseur, April, 1963, fig.15, p.230).
It is very rare to find examples with Canton enamel decoration of such large proportions, such as in the present lot, as the production would have been very costly and given the fragile nature of the material must have been awkward to transport. The only other known example is in the Casa Museu Dr. Anastcio Gonalves, Lisbon (inv.SIC-558). Examples of comparable shape and style are more frequently only gilt-decorated on a black-lacquer surface, displaying a wide range of subjects from pavilion landscapes to flower and bird compositions.
An oval Canton enamel panel, decorated with a very similar design to the back panel of this desk, can be found on a Canton enamel and gilt-lacquer table in the stasiatiska Museet, Stockholm, illustrated by J. Wirgin, Fran Kina till Europa, Stockholm, 1998, no.251, p.238; this table, together with its pair which is in the National Museum, Helsingfors, Finland, came from the collection of Karl XV.
It is very rare to find examples with Canton enamel decoration of such large proportions, such as in the present lot, as the production would have been very costly and given the fragile nature of the material must have been awkward to transport. The only other known example is in the Casa Museu Dr. Anastcio Gonalves, Lisbon (inv.SIC-558). Examples of comparable shape and style are more frequently only gilt-decorated on a black-lacquer surface, displaying a wide range of subjects from pavilion landscapes to flower and bird compositions.
An oval Canton enamel panel, decorated with a very similar design to the back panel of this desk, can be found on a Canton enamel and gilt-lacquer table in the stasiatiska Museet, Stockholm, illustrated by J. Wirgin, Fran Kina till Europa, Stockholm, 1998, no.251, p.238; this table, together with its pair which is in the National Museum, Helsingfors, Finland, came from the collection of Karl XV.