Lot Essay
This form of multi-purpose furniture, combining a mirrored-bookcase, bureau/dressing-cabinet and a chest-of-drawers on stand corresponds to 'Desk and Bookcase' and 'Lady's Bookcase' patterns illustrated by Thomas Chippendale (d.1779) in his Gentleman and Cabinet-Maker's Directors, 1754-1763 (pl. XXXIII), and in the Society of Upholsterer's Genteel Household Furniture in the Present Taste, circa 1765 (pl. 11 and 54). Their straight-sided handles and japanned 'herm' feet reflect the antique fashion of the 1780s. This rare pair of Cantonese lacquer cabinets have flower-festooned cornices, inhabited by birds and butterflies, which also feature on the panelled fronts and sides, where lightening-fretted ribbons rise from the left in alternating bands of grape-leaf on black, and peonies on gold grounds. Their mirrors' lake-side panoramas viewed through flowered arches relate to the decoration of a medallioned mirror of the 1780s illustrated in C. Child, World Mirrors, London, 1990, fig. 833. It is of interest to note that similar ribbons to the decoration on the stands feature on a lacquered box that contains mother-of-pearl counters commissioned in 1784 for Mary Morris of Philadelphia (J.G. Lee, Philadelphians and the China Trade, Philadelphia, 1984, no. 20).
Thomas Chippendale also featured a stone-bearing crane, emblematic of Vigilance, as a finial on a couch-bed pattern of 1760 (Director, 1762, pl. L). Acording to a legend mentioned by Aristotle in the Historia Animalium, the crane stood on one foot with the other raised holding a stone in its claw. When the bird fell asleep the stone dropped and immediately re-awakened it, so that it was ever watchful.
A similar bureau-cabinet with the same distinctive zig-zag decoration was sold by the Executors of the late Viscountess Ward of Witley in these Rooms, 25 June 1981, lot 75.
Thomas Chippendale also featured a stone-bearing crane, emblematic of Vigilance, as a finial on a couch-bed pattern of 1760 (Director, 1762, pl. L). Acording to a legend mentioned by Aristotle in the Historia Animalium, the crane stood on one foot with the other raised holding a stone in its claw. When the bird fell asleep the stone dropped and immediately re-awakened it, so that it was ever watchful.
A similar bureau-cabinet with the same distinctive zig-zag decoration was sold by the Executors of the late Viscountess Ward of Witley in these Rooms, 25 June 1981, lot 75.