A QUEEN ANNE SCARLET AND GILT-JAPANNED BACHELOR'S CHEST/WRITING-TABLE, the hinged rectangular top decorated with a chinoiserie landscape of pagodas, bonsai trees and courtly figures on horseback, with birds and insects within a silvered border, supported by twin turned column gatelegs and enclosing a brown leather-lined writing-surface with adjustable reading-slope and hinged compartment to the reverse, supported by a double gateleg and enclosing a further fitted interior with three compartments, one with a false bottom, another with a secret compartment beneath, the arched kneehole with one simulated drawer and three further simulated-nashiji lined drawers decorated with island scenes and chinoiserie figures, the flanking doors enclosing five drawers to each side, one simulated, decorated with cranes, geese and drums, the sides with lacquered-brass carrying-handles mounted on a foliate engraved backplate, on later turned bun feet, minor refreshments to decoration, the wells adapted, restorations

Details

Provenance

Sir Philip Sassoon, Bt., Trent Park, Hertfordshire, recorded in the Blue Room (South Drawing Room) in 1939

Literature

C. Hussey, 'Japanned Furniture at Trent Park', Country Life, 18 October 1930, p. 500, fig. 9
C. Hussey, 'Trent Park, Hertfordshire - II', Country Life,
17 January 1931, p. 70, fig. 8 (illustrated in situ in the Blue Room)
'Trent Park', The Antique Collector, December 1938, p. 348 (illustrated in situ in the South Drawing Room)
Dr. G. Doree, Trent Park: A Short History to 1939, 1974, repr. 1990 (illustrated in situ in the Blue Room)

Exhibited

London, Lansdowne House, W.1., Loan exhibition of English Decorative Art at Lansdowne House, 17-28 February 1929, no. 322
London, 25 Park Lane, W.1., The Age of Walnut, 1932, fig. 44

Lot Essay

This 'pier-commode' dressing-table with hinged top and carrying-handles reflects the fashion for moveable multi-purpose furniture introduced to London bedroom-apartments in the early 18th century, when St Paul's Churchyard was the centre of the cabinet-making industry. Decorated with 'Chinese red' japanning depicting golden lakeside-pavilions, horsemen, flowering-shrubs and birds in pursuit of outsized insects, its ornament typifies the oriental style of decoration proposed in Messrs. Stalker and Parker's Treatise of Japanning and Varnishing, 1688, as suitable for the decoration of bedroom apartments. A related scarlet-japanned bureau-cabinet supplied to Erddig, Wales in the early 18th century and attributed to John Belchier (d.1755), cabinet-maker of St. Paul's Churchyard, is illustrated in P. Macquoid and R. Edwards, The Dictionary of English Furniture, London, 1924-7; Rev.edn. 1954, I, p. 135, fig. 24. A similar walnut-veneered dressing-table of this form is illustrated in R. Edwards, The Shorter Dictionary of English Furniture, London, 1977, p. 73, fig. 4

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