The name 'Nonsuch' chest is believed to be inspired by the Nonsuch Palace, which was transported for Henry VIII in pre-fabricated sections from Holland, and erected on London Bridge in 1577. The decoration, however, is associated with craftsmen from Germany and the Low Countries who settled at Southwark to evade the restrictions on foreigners imposed by the City of London guilds. The building in the decoration is believed to be based on the Cologne Cathedral, although closely related drawings also exist in Vredeman de Vries' Variae Architecturae Formae, published in about 1560 in Antwerp.
Whilst the uneven and seemingly incomplete decoration might suggest that it could be an earlier addition to a 17th Century chest, it is believed that the marquetry was manufactured by specialists and applied to a carcase by the craftsmen who made the chest.
This lot has close similarities with a famous chest in Southwark Cathedral, illustrated in R. Edwards' The Shorter Dictionary of English Furniture, London, 1977, p. 189. A further closely related chest is at Temple Newsam and is illustrated in C. Gilbert's Furniture at Temple Newsam House and Lotherton Hall, Leeds, 1978, p. 128, pl. 144