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Lot Essay
The antiquarian bookcase china-cabinet is richly mosaiced in filigreed compartments, whose acanthus-wrapped ribbon scrolls reflect the Louis Quatorze Roman style popularised by Paul Androuet du Cerceau's Livre de Divers Ornements de Feuillage, circa 1650.
The fashion was perfected in fine marquetry furniture supplied to William III (d.1702) by the court cabinet-maker Gerrit Jensen (d.1715), and it was Jensen, who charged William III's Lord Chamberlain in 1693 the huge sum of £30 for 'a glass case of fine markatree upon a Cabonett [sic] with doors'. This has not been traced, but must have resembled the present cabinet (G. Beard (ed.), Dictionary of English Furniture Makers 1660-1840, Leeds, 1986, p. 486).
Like the marquetried bureau-cabinet presented in 1924 to the Victoria & Albert Museum, the present cabinet bears the inlaid signature of Samuel Bennet (d.1741), who adopted a cabinet for his shop-sign when establishing premises in 1700 in Lothbury. He also boasted the manufacture of 'All sorts of Fine Cabinet-Work' on his trade-sheet (C. Gilbert, Pictorial Dictionary of Marked London Furniture 1700-1840, Leeds, 1996, p.107, fig. 118). In place of the Museum cabinet's tablet London, Fecit, the signature is here accompanied by Bennetts later Monmouth Square address.
Its door façade's medallioned compartments, repeated inside, closely relate to those of a magnificent cabinet-on-chest formerly in the possession of Edward Dryden of Canons Ashby, Northamptonshire (d.1717) (J. Shurmer, Canons Ashby, 1993, p. 23).
The fashion was perfected in fine marquetry furniture supplied to William III (d.1702) by the court cabinet-maker Gerrit Jensen (d.1715), and it was Jensen, who charged William III's Lord Chamberlain in 1693 the huge sum of £30 for 'a glass case of fine markatree upon a Cabonett [sic] with doors'. This has not been traced, but must have resembled the present cabinet (G. Beard (ed.), Dictionary of English Furniture Makers 1660-1840, Leeds, 1986, p. 486).
Like the marquetried bureau-cabinet presented in 1924 to the Victoria & Albert Museum, the present cabinet bears the inlaid signature of Samuel Bennet (d.1741), who adopted a cabinet for his shop-sign when establishing premises in 1700 in Lothbury. He also boasted the manufacture of 'All sorts of Fine Cabinet-Work' on his trade-sheet (C. Gilbert, Pictorial Dictionary of Marked London Furniture 1700-1840, Leeds, 1996, p.107, fig. 118). In place of the Museum cabinet's tablet London, Fecit, the signature is here accompanied by Bennetts later Monmouth Square address.
Its door façade's medallioned compartments, repeated inside, closely relate to those of a magnificent cabinet-on-chest formerly in the possession of Edward Dryden of Canons Ashby, Northamptonshire (d.1717) (J. Shurmer, Canons Ashby, 1993, p. 23).