THE CABINET ATTRIBUTED TO GILES GRENDEY AND SECOND QUARTER 18TH CENTURY, THE GREEN-JAPANNED STAND CIRCA 1900

The pedimented cabinet is conceived in the George II Roman fashion with Corinthian pilasters derived in part from Isaac Ware's translation of Palladio's Four Books of Architecture, 1738. Its panel pattern, serpentined in the French picturesque manner, corresponds to that of a 1740s bureau-cabinet attributed to Messrs. Landall and Gordon of Sallow Street (C. Gilbert and T. Murdoch, John Channon and brass-inlaid Furniture, London, 1993, p. 72, fig. 68). The latter was no doubt originally mirrored, like the doors of the two other Corninthian-pilastered cabinets that Landall and Gordon are thought to have supplied to the Palling family of Brownshill, Gloucestershire and the Hobhouse family of Bristol (C. Gilbert, ibid., p. 71, fig. 66 and p. 73, fig. 70). This cabinet, appropriate for the furnishing of a bedroom apartment, is exotically japanned with golden flower sprigs strewn in the Oriental style, made fashionable by John Stalker and George Parker's Treatise of Japanning and Varnishing, 1688. Other related japanned and mahogany cabinets of the period have been recorded with the labels of Giles Grendey (d. 1780) of Clerkenwell (C. Gilbert, Pictorial Dictionary of Marked London Furniture 1700-1840, Leeds, 1996, p. 240, fig. 432 and p. 247, fig. 447).