Lot Essay
This Cantonese chest, decorated with golden landscapes and lakeside-pavilions on a black lacquer ground, displays the gold and silver armorials on a richly caparisoned red ground of Sir Robert Child, Bt. of Lincoln's Inn Fields and Osterley Park House, Middlesex. An alderman of London, Sir Robert was a Director of the Honourable East India Company from 1709-20 and inherited the Osterley estate, which his father had purchased two years previously, in 1713. Knighted at St. James's in 1714, he almost certainly commissioned this coffer to celebrate his election as Chairman of the Honourable East India Company in 1715, alongside his celebrated armorial porcelain service, a screen and chair-set of backs and seats, which all display identical arms and were almost certainly drawn from the same armorial template (the porcelain service is discussed in D.Howard, op.cit., fig.224, pp.172-3) . The pair to this coffer, likewise displayed on an early Georgian stand of 'Indian' padouk wood with slightly differently drawn legs, remains in the Gallery at Osterley (illustrated in 'Osterley Park House', Guide Book, London, 1985, p.24).
The 1782 Inventory of Osterley records no less than six 'jappanned chests'. Although the descriptions are tantalisingly brief, it would seem unlikely that the 'four jappanned chests on frames' listed in the Passages were of different sizes. This coffer, together with its pair at Osterley can therefore be identified either with the 'japanned chest on a stand' listed in the Yellow Dressing Room, which was hung with Chinese painted silk, or with the 'japanned chest' in the Turret Room.
As Horace Walpole noted in his diary in 1773, 'Mrs. Child's dressing-room is full of pictures, gold filigree, china and japan. So is all the house...'.
The 1782 Inventory of Osterley records no less than six 'jappanned chests'. Although the descriptions are tantalisingly brief, it would seem unlikely that the 'four jappanned chests on frames' listed in the Passages were of different sizes. This coffer, together with its pair at Osterley can therefore be identified either with the 'japanned chest on a stand' listed in the Yellow Dressing Room, which was hung with Chinese painted silk, or with the 'japanned chest' in the Turret Room.
As Horace Walpole noted in his diary in 1773, 'Mrs. Child's dressing-room is full of pictures, gold filigree, china and japan. So is all the house...'.