LATE 18TH CENTURY, VIZAGAPATAM

This writing and dressing-box/jewel-case, conceived as a pedimented bureau-cabinet in the mid-18th Century Dutch manner, belongs to a group of exotic ivory-veneered furniture that was executed under the direction of the Dutch and English East India Companies at Vizagapatam, Andhra State, on the Coromandel Coast for retail in Madras and Calcutta (A.K.H. Jaffer, 'The Furniture Trade in Early Colonial India', Oriental Art, vol. XLI, no.1, Spring 1995, figs. 8 & 9). Its black rosewood tablets are wreathed by mosaiced ivory-enriched ribbons with 'India chintz' flowers, like those of the Victoria and Albert Museum's 'British Museum' cabinet, incorporating vignettes from S. Wale, London and Its Environs Described, 1761 (illustrated in 'Art & the East India Trade', Exhibition Catalogue, Victoria and Albert Museum, London, 1970, fig. 21).