ATTRIBUTED TO GILES GRENDEY, CIRCA 1740

These magnificent white japanned bureau-cabinets, a dazzling marriage of East and West, are remarkable alike for the rarity of the ground colour, which paint analysis has revealed was originally a white with scarlet and gilt detailing, and for the fact that they have survived together as a pair.

From as early as the 16th Century enlightened connoisseurs in the West were obsessed with the mysterious, exotic products of the East, whose workmanship seemed almost miraculous. Similar to the quest to create a Western version of porcelain, the Holy Grail for cabinet-makers in the West was to produce japanned wares to rival the lustrous perfection of Chinese and Japanese lacquer, so much so that in 1688 in London Messrs. Stalker and Parker published their famous Treatise of Japanning and Varnishing which featured many Chinoiserie vignettes similar to those on these cabinets.

WHITE-JAPANNING
White japanned furniture is considered to be the rarest of the japanned colour schemes. Paint analysis has revealed the prescence of smalt in the original layers of decoration. Smalt is a blue, glass-like pigment which was frequently added to the grounds of 18th century to create white japanned furniture. However over time smalt can lose its colour. The more recent green tone of these bureaux has occured when the later layers of japanning and varnish - added when they were restored - have discoloured. A glimpse of the original colour scheme is more evident to the interiors. A pair of white, blue and polychrome-japanned bureau-cabinets also attributed to the workshop of Giles Grendey were sold in the Exceptional Sale, Christie's, London 7 July 2011 for £361,250 including premium.

THE ATTRIBUTION
This rare pair of cabinets can be attributed with some certainty to the London workshop of the celebrated cabinet-maker Giles Grendey (1693-1780) of St. John's Square, Clerkenwell, on the basis of two closely related examples bearing his trade label, one in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London (illustrated in A. Coleridge, Chippendale Furniture, New York, 1968, fig. 375), and one illustrated in R. Edwards and M. Jourdain, Georgian Cabinet-Makers, London, 1955, p. 145, fig. 50. All of these cabinets feature the same distinctive cartouche-shaped reserve to the ornament of the fall-front as the pair of cabinets offered here, along with similar compositions of Chinoiserie figures flanked by buildings on the right on a distinctively diagonal axis, while the pediments of all four cabinets are centred by a shell. The distinctive feature of perched birds also appearing in the pediment is something of a leitmotif of Grendey's japanning, appearing for instance on chairs from the celebrated Lazcano suite (see examples sold from the Rosen Foundation, Caramoor, Christie's, New York, 2 February 1980, lot 245), and on a set of four girandole mirrors attributed to Grendey, illustrated in the Ronald Phillips exhibition catalogue Reflections of the Past Mirrors 1685-1815, London, 2004, cat. 27.

GILES GRENDEY
Grendey had one of the most extensive cabinet-making workshops in London and made a particular speciality of furniture made for export, predominantly to Spain, where demand for lacquer furniture was at its height in the 1730s and 1740s. The importance of Grendey's overseas business is demonstrated by the fact that a disastrous fire at his workshop in 1731 included furniture valued at £1,000 which he "had pack'd for Exportation", and "an easy Chair of such rich and curious workmanship that he refus'd 500 guineas for it, it being intended... to be purchas'd by a Person of Quality who design'd it as a Present for a German Prince" (see G. Beard and C. Gilbert, Dictionary of English Furniture Makers 1660-1840, Leeds, 1986, p. 371). Grendey's most famous export commission, and one of the most celebrated suites of the 18th Century, was made for the Duke of Infantado for his castle Lazcano in Northern Spain. It comprised an enormous suite of red and gilt lacquer furniture of at least 72 pieces, including seat furniture, candlestands and card tables. That the suite also included at least two pairs of bureau-cabinets is revealed by the remarkable late 19th Century photograph of the interior of Lazcano illustrated here, demonstrating that lacquer bureau-cabinets, particularly those made for export, were often conceived as pairs.