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Lot Essay
The production and distribution of this style of inlaid furniture can be traced to Western India, a well-established centre of luxury items that traded with merchants from Europe, the Middle East and South-East Asia. Contemporary accounts vary regarding the location of the ateliers, signifying perhaps that there were several centres sharing methods of production and producing similar styles.
These intricately crafted chests and cabinets appealed to both local and foreign tastes alike. Documents and portrait miniatures show Mughal rulers with European-style furniture, for instance a 17th century Portrait of Rustam Khan in the Chester Beatty library (See Jorge Flores and Nuno Vassallo e Silva (eds.), Goa and The Great Mughal, exhibition catalogue, Lisbon, 2004, pp. 111-115).
17th and 18th century European inventories suggest that there was a considerable amount of “Indo-Portuguese” work made in Goa and other Portuguese cities on the west coast of India. This box demonstrates the Portuguese fascination for intricate and concentrated designs that recall textiles, and for ornamentation covering the entire surface of an object. It is comparable with writing boxes and cabinets produced in Gujarat and Sindh in the 16th and 17th centuries, see for instance, a small fall-front cabinet in the Victoria & Albert Museum (317-1866). The green-tinted ivory, also seen on our chest, is associated with Mughal-inspired Gujarati designs. The sculptural treatment of the corner caryatid figures are very typical of the work found on Indo-Portuguese furniture.
Whilst contemporaraneous export interest for these items focussed on the Portuguese market, the fashion for Indo-Portuguese furniture in the United Kingdom reached its height much later in the 1880s following two exhibitions held at the South Kensington Museum, the ‘Special Loan Exhibition of Spanish and Portuguese Ornamental Art’ in 1881, and the ‘Colonial and Indian Exhibition’ in 1886.
A number of comparable seventeenth-century inlaid pieces include a cabinet in the Victoria and Albert Museum (Flores and Vasallo e Silva, op.cit, p.113) and a chest in the Fundação Ricardo do Espírito Santo Silva, Lisbon (Flores and Silva, op.cit, p.113). A Goanese cabinet with illustrious provenance, having been in three European royal houses- Braganza, Saxe-Coburg and Hohenzollern- and decorated in an extremely similar fashion sold in these Rooms, 30th January 2019, lot 25. Another, the Leyland Cabinet, sold in these Rooms 6 July 2017, lot 18. A chest of almost identical form and design sold at Christie’s, South Kensington, 6 July 2008, lot 297.
These intricately crafted chests and cabinets appealed to both local and foreign tastes alike. Documents and portrait miniatures show Mughal rulers with European-style furniture, for instance a 17th century Portrait of Rustam Khan in the Chester Beatty library (See Jorge Flores and Nuno Vassallo e Silva (eds.), Goa and The Great Mughal, exhibition catalogue, Lisbon, 2004, pp. 111-115).
17th and 18th century European inventories suggest that there was a considerable amount of “Indo-Portuguese” work made in Goa and other Portuguese cities on the west coast of India. This box demonstrates the Portuguese fascination for intricate and concentrated designs that recall textiles, and for ornamentation covering the entire surface of an object. It is comparable with writing boxes and cabinets produced in Gujarat and Sindh in the 16th and 17th centuries, see for instance, a small fall-front cabinet in the Victoria & Albert Museum (317-1866). The green-tinted ivory, also seen on our chest, is associated with Mughal-inspired Gujarati designs. The sculptural treatment of the corner caryatid figures are very typical of the work found on Indo-Portuguese furniture.
Whilst contemporaraneous export interest for these items focussed on the Portuguese market, the fashion for Indo-Portuguese furniture in the United Kingdom reached its height much later in the 1880s following two exhibitions held at the South Kensington Museum, the ‘Special Loan Exhibition of Spanish and Portuguese Ornamental Art’ in 1881, and the ‘Colonial and Indian Exhibition’ in 1886.
A number of comparable seventeenth-century inlaid pieces include a cabinet in the Victoria and Albert Museum (Flores and Vasallo e Silva, op.cit, p.113) and a chest in the Fundação Ricardo do Espírito Santo Silva, Lisbon (Flores and Silva, op.cit, p.113). A Goanese cabinet with illustrious provenance, having been in three European royal houses- Braganza, Saxe-Coburg and Hohenzollern- and decorated in an extremely similar fashion sold in these Rooms, 30th January 2019, lot 25. Another, the Leyland Cabinet, sold in these Rooms 6 July 2017, lot 18. A chest of almost identical form and design sold at Christie’s, South Kensington, 6 July 2008, lot 297.