A LARGE GERMAN BURR-BIRCH BUREAU-CABINET

MID-18TH CENTURY

細節

A LARGE GERMAN BURR-BIRCH BUREAU-CABINET
Mid-18th Century
Inlaid overall with kingwood banding, the arched broken and overhanging cornice with central plinth above two shaped doors inset with later bevelled mirrors and enclosing a fitted interior with one adjustable shelf above a central door enclosing three pigeon-holes and three drawers, flanked by three drawers, folio-slides and pigeon-holes and above four short drawers, the candle-slides above a writing-slope with reading-support enclosing a brown-leather writing-surface and a fitted interior carved with lunar masks further drawers with ten variously-sized drawers and ten pigeon-holes flanking a central door, the frieze with four further concealed drawers and above the lower section with a moulded edge above three short drawers, two short drawers and a long drawer, on angled cabriole legs, the cornice reduced in height, the back feet partially replaced, with printed label inscribed 97, a fragmentary label inscribed .....AN HERCK & .... and with further label inscribed BEVEREN 'Korte walle', restorations and the fitted doors to the interior of the top replaced, possibly Danish
56½in. (143.5cm.) wide; 103¼in. (262cm.) high; 25½in. (65cm.) deep

拍品專文

This magnificient bureau-cabinet displays a Roman triumphal-arched pediment after the antique of Palladian style, such as featured in Batty Langley's City and Country Builder's and Workman's Treasury of Designs, 1740, pl. CXXI. However, its basic pattern, together with lozenged-tablet escutcheons and its drawer-fitted interior 'prospect' with pilaster-flanked 'tabernacle' compartment, featured in an English bureau design that appears to have been executed in the early 1720s when Peter the Great's craftsmen were trainng in London. Indeed its ogival-swept door-entablature featured as the cornice of an accompanying bureau design which was likewise presented in 1738 as prototypes for the 'cabinets of diverse manner' to be executed in St. Petersburg for Empress Anna Ionnovna. In view of this bureau's ribbon inlay of exotic wood, it is worth noting that Fedor Martynov (fl. 1738-50), when embarking on the manufacture of one of these patterns, requested planks of exotic woods to accompany the burr-walnut (N.I. Guseva, 'Fedor Martynov, Russian Master Cabinet Maker', Furniture History Society Journal, 1994, p. 95, figs. 1 and 2). The extravagant scale of this bureau's mirror panels corresponds to that of a related open-pedimented cabinet illustrated on an advertisement-sheet of the late 1730s issued by Thomas Potter, cabinet-maker of High Holborn (C. Gilbert and T. Murdoch, John Channon and brass-inlaid furniture, London, 1993, fig. 11). While the cabinet's doors are embellished with large brass hinge-plates in the Oriental manner, the drawer partitions of the interior are fretted with whimsical lunar-masks. Its London-patterned drawer-handles feature with richly fretted escutcheons on a related cabinet with closely related scrolling feet, attributed to Christian Linning (d. 1779), who was elected master cabinet-maker in 1744 in Stockholm (M. Lagerquist, Rokokomöbler, Stockholm, 1949, figs. 1-3).