.jpg?w=1)
Lot Essay
A collector's cabinet was as much a display of one's interests as of how one wished to be seen by one's peers. With their origins in the medieval treasury, the earliest collectors' cabinets we know of were actually small, intimate rooms for the rich and powerful. Old master paintings, fine tapestries, costly silver and antique sculpture were collected alongside ostrich eggs, conch shells, stuffed porcupines and the fossilized jawbone of a prehistoric monster. Perhaps because not all collectors were princes, the cabinet began to take on another form aside from an entire room. It could also be a lockable piece of furniture for the storage and display of small precious and rare objects. These cabinets as furniture forms were constructed of and decorated with exquisite materials such as ebony, ivory or pietra dura that made them as much the object of desire and display as that which they contained. There was a subtle witticism involved where the cabinet competed with the rarities inside for the viewer's admiration.
Fully characteristic of this practice of erudite display is the current collector's cabinet. As with earlier cabinets, it was created to be displayed and prized in its own merit as evidence of the owner's wealth and cultural acumen. Its intricate brass inlay recalls the court of fashion of late seventeenth century Versailles popularized by the Prince Regent and his inner circle of francophile friends in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Its intricate 'buhl' inlay is taken from prototypes as executed by Louis XIV's Royal ebeniste Andre-Charles Boulle and the designs of Jean Berain.
The cabinet was most likely executed within the circle of the French trained cabinet-maker and upholder Louis Constantin Le Gaigneur (active 1814-1821) or one of his competitors such as Thomas Parker (active 1805-1830). Le Gaigneur, whose workshop at 9 Queen Street, Edgeware Road, was far from the St. Martin's Lane center of furniture production when he advertised himself as a French Buhl Manufacturer, seems to have been patronized almost exclusively by George, Prince of Wales, later King George IV and his intimates. Perhaps most characteristic of this patronage was a most intricately inlaid bureau-plat in pewter, brass, copper and tortoise signed by Le Gaigneur and supplied in 1815, now in Windsor Castle. Another desk of identical design is in the Wallace Collection (illustrated in P. Hughes, The Wallace Collection: Catalogue of Furniture, vol. II, no. 167, p. 785-789). A signed bureau-on-stand, enclosing similar ranges of drawers and acanthus-cast feet but lacking inlay, was sold by Mr. Edward Sarofim, Christie's London, 16 November 1995, lot 139 (£95,000).
Another possible maker of this cabinet is Thomas Parker, who advertised himself as the Cabinet & Buhl Manufacturer to the Prince Regent and Royal Family. Parker supplied a quantity of lavishly decorated furniture in the French fashion for Carlton House between 1813 and 1817. Interestingly, the brass-inlaid case of a grand piano acquired by George IV for the Brighton Pavilion in 1817 and now in Buckingham Palace, illustrated in J. Russell, et. al., Buckingham Palace, London, 1968, pp. 132-133, bears similarity in the stylized scrolling inlay that centers rosettes. Similar comparison can be drawn to the inlaid designs of George Bullock (d. 1818), another prolific maker, although the patterns do not conform precisely to designs in Bullock's primary resource, The Wilkinson Tracings.
Fully characteristic of this practice of erudite display is the current collector's cabinet. As with earlier cabinets, it was created to be displayed and prized in its own merit as evidence of the owner's wealth and cultural acumen. Its intricate brass inlay recalls the court of fashion of late seventeenth century Versailles popularized by the Prince Regent and his inner circle of francophile friends in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Its intricate 'buhl' inlay is taken from prototypes as executed by Louis XIV's Royal ebeniste Andre-Charles Boulle and the designs of Jean Berain.
The cabinet was most likely executed within the circle of the French trained cabinet-maker and upholder Louis Constantin Le Gaigneur (active 1814-1821) or one of his competitors such as Thomas Parker (active 1805-1830). Le Gaigneur, whose workshop at 9 Queen Street, Edgeware Road, was far from the St. Martin's Lane center of furniture production when he advertised himself as a French Buhl Manufacturer, seems to have been patronized almost exclusively by George, Prince of Wales, later King George IV and his intimates. Perhaps most characteristic of this patronage was a most intricately inlaid bureau-plat in pewter, brass, copper and tortoise signed by Le Gaigneur and supplied in 1815, now in Windsor Castle. Another desk of identical design is in the Wallace Collection (illustrated in P. Hughes, The Wallace Collection: Catalogue of Furniture, vol. II, no. 167, p. 785-789). A signed bureau-on-stand, enclosing similar ranges of drawers and acanthus-cast feet but lacking inlay, was sold by Mr. Edward Sarofim, Christie's London, 16 November 1995, lot 139 (£95,000).
Another possible maker of this cabinet is Thomas Parker, who advertised himself as the Cabinet & Buhl Manufacturer to the Prince Regent and Royal Family. Parker supplied a quantity of lavishly decorated furniture in the French fashion for Carlton House between 1813 and 1817. Interestingly, the brass-inlaid case of a grand piano acquired by George IV for the Brighton Pavilion in 1817 and now in Buckingham Palace, illustrated in J. Russell, et. al., Buckingham Palace, London, 1968, pp. 132-133, bears similarity in the stylized scrolling inlay that centers rosettes. Similar comparison can be drawn to the inlaid designs of George Bullock (d. 1818), another prolific maker, although the patterns do not conform precisely to designs in Bullock's primary resource, The Wilkinson Tracings.