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Lot Essay
The writing-cabinet is designed in the manner of David Roentgen's ingenious and strongly architectural desks of the mid 1780s such as the desk supplied to Count Alexander Sergeyevich Stroganoff, and another roll top desk for Catherine the Great, both at St Petersburg. Roentgen (d.1807) of Neuwid near Cologne, exported his furniture to various European destinations, and they may also have been popularised in London by French marchands-merciers such as Dominique Daguerre who opened premises in Piccadilly, London, supplying the Prince of Wales and his fashionable circle, including the Duke of Bedford and Earl Spencer. At the same time Thomas Shearer published designs for a `Tambour Writing Table' in The Cabinet-Maker's London Book of Prices, 1788, pl. 12, also of somewhat architectural form.
The cabinet offered here is probably London-made and it is very likely that it was executed by John Okely (or Oakely), originally from Bedford but of Moravian descent and apprenticed to Abraham and David Roentgen at Neuweid in 1766, remaining there until 1772. He is recorded at 13 Dean Street, Soho, between 1775 - 93 and was possibly a subscriber to Sheraton's Drawing Book in 1793 (C.Gilbert, Dictionary of English Furniture Makers 1660 - 1840, Leeds, 1986, p. 661). The varicolored marquetry bands on the uprights and the tambour shutters effectively mimic Roentgen's ormolu mille-raie panels. The German Journal de Luxus und der Modern published in 1801 in Weimar noted `that everybody of taste and discrimination [was] now making their purchases at Oakelys, the most tasteful of London's Furniture Upholsterers' (Wolfram Koepe, Extravagent Inventions The Princely Furniture of the Roentgens, New York, 2012, p. 239, note 29).
The cabinet offered here is probably London-made and it is very likely that it was executed by John Okely (or Oakely), originally from Bedford but of Moravian descent and apprenticed to Abraham and David Roentgen at Neuweid in 1766, remaining there until 1772. He is recorded at 13 Dean Street, Soho, between 1775 - 93 and was possibly a subscriber to Sheraton's Drawing Book in 1793 (C.Gilbert, Dictionary of English Furniture Makers 1660 - 1840, Leeds, 1986, p. 661). The varicolored marquetry bands on the uprights and the tambour shutters effectively mimic Roentgen's ormolu mille-raie panels. The German Journal de Luxus und der Modern published in 1801 in Weimar noted `that everybody of taste and discrimination [was] now making their purchases at Oakelys, the most tasteful of London's Furniture Upholsterers' (Wolfram Koepe, Extravagent Inventions The Princely Furniture of the Roentgens, New York, 2012, p. 239, note 29).