Lot Essay
This exotic ivory-veneered writing and dressing-box/jewel-case is designed as a miniature bureau-cabinet with fluted pilasters and temple-pedimented façade in the George II Palladian style, and is richly engraved in the Indian fashion with floral ornament, birds and buildings in the antique manner of the 1770s. The cabinet is typical of pieces produced in Vizagapatam, on the northern end of the Coromandel Coast, during the second half of the 18th Century. An active port, the Dutch East India Company patronised and trained Indian carpenters who produced goods based on European designs for export to Madras and Calcutta (A.K.H. Jaffer, 'The Furniture Trade in Early Colonial India', Oriental Art, vol. XLI, no. I, Spring 1995, p. 12-13).
Similar dressing-boxes, also decorated with flowered medallions, garlands and guilloche-ribbons, were sold anonymously at Sotheby's London, 19 November 1988, lot 79 and in these Rooms, 16 November 1989, lot 28. A related ivory-inlaid rosewood cabinet retaining its original stand is displayed in the Victoria & Albert Museum ('Art and the East India Trade', Apollo, December 1970, p. 485, fig. 4).
Similar dressing-boxes, also decorated with flowered medallions, garlands and guilloche-ribbons, were sold anonymously at Sotheby's London, 19 November 1988, lot 79 and in these Rooms, 16 November 1989, lot 28. A related ivory-inlaid rosewood cabinet retaining its original stand is displayed in the Victoria & Albert Museum ('Art and the East India Trade', Apollo, December 1970, p. 485, fig. 4).