.jpg?w=1)
Lot Essay
This cabinet belongs to one of the earliest identifiable groups of furniture made in India under Portuguese patronage in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. Historically they have been attributed to Goa because of a comparable cabinet dated to the 17th century that was originally housed in the Viceroy's Palace there and which is now in the Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga in Lisbon (inv.1312; J. Flores and N. Vassallo e Silva, Goa and the Great Mughal, London, 2004, p.69). More recent scholarship however cites contemporaneous accounts of European travellers to India, and on this basis has reattributed such cabinets. According to the Dutch merchant Francisco Pelsaerts, writing in 1626, Tatta in Sindh was a centre of manufacture for 'ornamental desks, writing cases [...] very prettily inlaid with ivory and ebony' while James Ovington wrote that Surat in Gujarat, was a source of 'desks, sutores and boxes neatly polisht and embellisht' in the late 1680's (Amin Jaffer, Luxury Goods from India. The Art of the Indian Cabinet Maker, London, 2002, p. 18.). That the production of such furniture was based in western India can be taken as certain, but it is possible that there were several centres working in related styles but sharing methods of production.
Wherever they were made it is apparent that large numbers of such cabinets were made to be traded locally and with Europe where their exotic materials and decoration meant that they were held in high esteem. Another contemporary account, written by Pyrard de Laval in 1610 describing the goods that were traded through Goa, states 'I should mention a great number of cabinets of all patterns... This is an article the most perfect and of the finest workmanship to be seen anywhere' (Jaffer,op.cit., p.18).
The technique of sadeli, a micro-mosaic of woods and metals arranged in geometric patterns, which decorates the drawers here, is particularly associated with the Near and Middle East from where it spread - both west to Italy and east to Iran (where it is known as khatamkhar) and India. A similar box, though with a fall-front, is in the Victoria and Albert Museum (Jaffer, op.cit., no.3, pp.18-19). Another sold in Christie's, King Street, 7 April 2011, lot 257.
Wherever they were made it is apparent that large numbers of such cabinets were made to be traded locally and with Europe where their exotic materials and decoration meant that they were held in high esteem. Another contemporary account, written by Pyrard de Laval in 1610 describing the goods that were traded through Goa, states 'I should mention a great number of cabinets of all patterns... This is an article the most perfect and of the finest workmanship to be seen anywhere' (Jaffer,op.cit., p.18).
The technique of sadeli, a micro-mosaic of woods and metals arranged in geometric patterns, which decorates the drawers here, is particularly associated with the Near and Middle East from where it spread - both west to Italy and east to Iran (where it is known as khatamkhar) and India. A similar box, though with a fall-front, is in the Victoria and Albert Museum (Jaffer, op.cit., no.3, pp.18-19). Another sold in Christie's, King Street, 7 April 2011, lot 257.