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Lot Essay
A closely related bureau-cabinet featuring a glazed door which replaced an original looking-glass, and bearing the label of the cabinet-maker John Phillips, is illustrated in Sir Ambrose Heal, The London Furniture Makers from the Restoration to the Victorian Era, 1660-1840, London, 1953, fig. 16 and again in Adam Bowett, Early Georgian Furniture 1715 - 1740, Woodbridge, 2009, p.76, pl. 2.49. John Phillips is recorded as having premises at 'The Cabinet', St. Paul's Churchyard by 1725, but moved to Cornhill, near the Royal Exchange by 1732.
The present bureau-cabinet, like the illustrated example, features drawer-edge cockbeads. This feature, in which the ovolo-moulding is attached to the edges of the drawer rather than to the carcase drawer recess, was introduced in the 1720's. Bowett identifies the first dated piece of furniture that displays this feature, a brass-mounted mahogany burueu-cabinet bearing a hand-written label 'Antrobus fecit 1730', (ibid. p.74) though it's clear the practice was not adopted universally for some years to come.
The present bureau-cabinet, like the illustrated example, features drawer-edge cockbeads. This feature, in which the ovolo-moulding is attached to the edges of the drawer rather than to the carcase drawer recess, was introduced in the 1720's. Bowett identifies the first dated piece of furniture that displays this feature, a brass-mounted mahogany burueu-cabinet bearing a hand-written label 'Antrobus fecit 1730', (ibid. p.74) though it's clear the practice was not adopted universally for some years to come.
