THE CABINET AND STAND MID-18TH CENTURY, THE PANELS EARLY 18TH CENTURY

The handwritten inventory labels dating to 1845 are those of Walter, 5th Duke of Buccleuch and 7th Duke of Queensberry (d.1884).  The Duke was heir to the spectacular properties of the Montagu, Douglas and Scott families including Drumlanrig, Dalkeith, Boughton, Bowhill, Adderbury and Montagu House in London – however the original commission for this rare ‘Bantam’ work cabinet has not yet been identified.  A late 17th century coromandel lacquer cabinet-on-stand bears the same Buccleuch inventory label (numbered 4).   The latter was sold as part of collector Simon Sainsbury’s celebrated sale, ‘Simon Sainsbury: The Creation of an English Arcadia’, Christie’s, London, 18 June 2008, lot 39 (£30,000).   That cabinet and the present example both bear lacquer panels that date to the 1680s.  The earlier Sainsbury cabinet also retains its late 17th century scroll-legged stand.  The present cabinet appears to date to the mid-18th century, by virtue of its more refined construction, but using earlier lacquer panels and imitating imported Chinese prototypes; the cabinet appears to be contemporary with the stand.  It is interesting to note that while trade records show a decline in the importation of lacquer goods from the late 17th century, Asian lacquer was still considered a luxury good in the second quarter of the 18th century when this piece would have been made (A. Bowett, Early Georgian Furniture 1715-1740, 2009, pp. 42-43).

Various Buccleuch ancestors were partial to lacquer furnishings.  In the 1670s, Ralph, 1st Duke of Montagu (d. 1709) endeavored to emulate the arts of France while serving as the King's Ambassador Extraordinary to the Court of Louis XIV.  As Keeper of the King's Great Wardrobe from 1671 and 'Comptroller' of the Royal Tapestry Works at Mortlake from 1674, Montagu's role was to supervise the purveyors of furnishings to the Royal households and to set the 'national' or 'court' style - and this catapulted his ambition to enlarge both Montagu House and Boughton in the most fashionable taste expounded by the French court.  The early inventories of Boughton reveal a plethora of lacquer furniture- including a Coromandel lacquer dressing table and mirror attributed to Gerrit Jensen.  The 1718 inventory also records 'an India cabinet on a black japanned frame’ which is now untraced.  Both the Jensen dressing set and this cabinet are of 'Bantam' or Coromandel incised lacquer - as opposed to flat lacquer or 'japanned' decoration more frequently seen in contemporary Inventories (T. Murdoch et al., Boughton House The English Versailles, London, 1992, pp. 132-133, pl. 78). 
In the early 18th century, Anne, Duchess of Buccleuch (d.1732), the daughter-in-law of King Charles II as wife of the Duke of Monmouth, remodelled Dalkeith Palace commissioning japanned furniture from James Moore in 1700-1.  An Inventory & Appraisement of Household Furniture at Dalkeith House, taken on 10 March 1812, includes various references to cabinets, including:  in the 'Principal Bed Chamber - An India Cabinet', 'Lady Queensberry's Room - An India Cabinet' and 'Lady Queensberry's Sitting Room - An old India Cabinet'.  A coromandel and parcel-gilt kneehole dressing table on acanthus-wrapped scrolled legs giltwood stand was very probably supplied by the same cabinet-maker as the Sainsbury cabinet-on-stand. Still in the collection of the Dukes of Buccleuch and Queensberry at Bowhill, Scotland, it is certainly conceivable that this is the 'buro made of Japan' referred to on James Moore's bill.

Coromandel lacquer or 'Bantamwork', with its characteristic incised decoration, was made in Honan province in Northern China from the latter part of the Ming dynasty and exported to Europe from the end of the 17th Century through the East India Company's trading posts on the Coromandel Coast of India. The technique consisted in overlaying a base of wood with a series of increasingly fine white clays and fibrous grasses. Over this surface, lacquer was applied and polished before the design was incised and the hollowed out portions filled with colour and gilt and finished with a clear lacquer to protect it. Although John Stalker and George Parker used the term 'Bantamwork', the contemporary layman usually called it 'cutt-work', 'cutt Japan' or 'hollow burnt Japan'. Stalker and Parker discuss two types of 'Bantam-work' - flat and incised - in their Treatise on Japanning and Varnishing of 1688, noting that it 'was done in colorus mix't with a gum water'. They also considered that it was 'almost obsolete, and out of fashion, out of use and neglected....' although admitted that 'it was very pretty, and some are more fond of it, and prefer it to the other...'