Sécretaire (or writing cabinet) on cabriole legs, mounted with painted porcelain plaques and gilded brass

Small cabinet (or sécretaire) on four cabriole legs, fitted with a fall-front for writing. There are four small drawers behind the fall-front, with a larger drawer above and one below the cabinet. The lower drawer opens with a spring.

The case and drawers are veneered in cross-banded tulipwood, the drawers lined with green silk. The writing surface on the fall-front is covered in green velvet.

The case is mounted with ten porcelain plaques: a large rectangular plaque on the fall-front which shows a pastoral scene, and large oval plaques on either side of the case showing baskets of fruit and flowers and gardening implements. The seven small plaques on the apron drawer front and lower sides of the case show gardening implements and musical instruments.

The gilt-brass mounts are festoons and bands, with an open gallery round the marble slab on the top. The curved legs end in gilt-brass feet.

Bequeathed by John Jones

This is one of two sécretaires, of similar form, bequeathed to the V&A in 1882 as part of the John Jones collection (the museum number of the other sécretaire is 1047-1882).

John Jones was a military tailor who had a large and important collection of 18th- century French paintings, sculpture and decorative art. Reflecting the great fashion for French furniture among 19th-century collectors and cabinet-makers, Jones also owned a number of reproductions of 18th-century furniture, as well as contemporary objects made in an 18th-century style.

A version of this cabinet or its pair (1047-1882) was illustrated in an engraving of 'A Corner of the Sinclair Galleries' in Two Centuries of Soho. Its Institutions, Firm and Amusements by the Clergy of St Anne's, Soho by JH Cardwell, HR Freeman and GC Wilton, published in London by Truslove and Hanson, 1898, p. 193. The text was probably supplied by Frederick Litchfield, the writr on furniture history who had bought the Sinclair Galleries in 1895 and continued to run it until his retirement in 1903. The the image as printed is identified as 'From Litchfield's History of Furniture' [the Illustrated History of Furniture From the Earliest to the Present Time was published by Truslove and Hanson in 1892 and went into many editions but this image has not been traced in the 1899 edition. Litchfield's book has been reprinted many times and one of the reprints uses an image of such a secretaire in the centre of the soft cover of the book, possibly the image of 1048-1882.

This sécretaire uses a mid-18th-century French form. In the 18th-century sécretaires such as this were designed as personal writing furniture - the case is fitted with a lockable fall-front which can be used as a writing surface. Behind this fall-front are small drawers, one fitted with an inkwell. This object was made in England in the mid-19th-century, as part of a revival of the mid-18th century Rococo style.

This is one of two sécretaires of similar form (Museum numbers: 1047 & 1048-1882), bequeathed to the V&A in 1882 as part of the John Jones collection. John Jones was a military tailor who assembled a large and important collection of 18th-century French fine and decorative art. In his London house, at number 95 Piccadilly, Jones arranged his collection carefully, often grouping objects by maker, period, medium, style or historical association. The two sécretaires stood in the drawing-room on the first floor of his house, where they were displayed with a pair of 18th-century Chelsea porcelain vases (Museum numbers: 826&A-1882).

1048:1-1882