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Lot Essay
This superb secrétaire cabinet, remarkable both for its splendid bold design and technical ingenuity, relates to some of the most celebrated phases of 18th Century European cabinet-making.
It relates to a group of brass-enriched furniture conceived in the French fashion that the artist William Hogarth helped promote at his St Martin's Lane Academy in the 1730s. The study of these masterpieces of Georgian cabinet-making have focused on Hogarth's St. Martin's Lane neighbour, the 'Cabinet-Maker and Frame-Maker', John Channon (d. 1779). The sliding brass-inlaid rosewood reading-slope of the present piece is particularly close to some of Channon's work of the 1740s and early 50s such as those illustrated in C. Gilbert and T. Murdoch, John Channon and brass-inlaid furniture 1730-1760, London, 1993, XVIII and figs. 106-109.
The present secrétaire is not only linked to this group, but also closely related to a number of contemporary German phases of cabinet-making from which this particular Georgian style derives. This includes some celebrated brass and ormolu-mounted bureau-cabinets and commodes executed in Dresden in the 1740s, such as those illustrated in H. Kreisel/G.Himmelheber, Die Kunst des deutschen Möbels, Munich, 1970, vol. II, figs 833 and 835. Another associated group is the furniture by Abraham and David Roentgen of Neuwied, which was unsurpassed in crafsmanship and famous for its technical devices. Several of their pieces had ingenious mechanisms such as hidden and spring-loaded drawer banks or central locking systems. The cabinet-maker who executed the present piece must have been aware of aspects of their oeuvre as the hinged scrolls to the angles revealing drawers as well as various aspects of the construction show similarities with that of the celebrated Roentgen workshop.
It relates to a group of brass-enriched furniture conceived in the French fashion that the artist William Hogarth helped promote at his St Martin's Lane Academy in the 1730s. The study of these masterpieces of Georgian cabinet-making have focused on Hogarth's St. Martin's Lane neighbour, the 'Cabinet-Maker and Frame-Maker', John Channon (d. 1779). The sliding brass-inlaid rosewood reading-slope of the present piece is particularly close to some of Channon's work of the 1740s and early 50s such as those illustrated in C. Gilbert and T. Murdoch, John Channon and brass-inlaid furniture 1730-1760, London, 1993, XVIII and figs. 106-109.
The present secrétaire is not only linked to this group, but also closely related to a number of contemporary German phases of cabinet-making from which this particular Georgian style derives. This includes some celebrated brass and ormolu-mounted bureau-cabinets and commodes executed in Dresden in the 1740s, such as those illustrated in H. Kreisel/G.Himmelheber, Die Kunst des deutschen Möbels, Munich, 1970, vol. II, figs 833 and 835. Another associated group is the furniture by Abraham and David Roentgen of Neuwied, which was unsurpassed in crafsmanship and famous for its technical devices. Several of their pieces had ingenious mechanisms such as hidden and spring-loaded drawer banks or central locking systems. The cabinet-maker who executed the present piece must have been aware of aspects of their oeuvre as the hinged scrolls to the angles revealing drawers as well as various aspects of the construction show similarities with that of the celebrated Roentgen workshop.