Pair of secretaire cabinets, with double doors enclosing pigeon holes and drawers, one on each fitted with ink bottles, above writing slides. The stands have a single drawer. The cabinets are in cedar, veneered in fiddle-bacl maple and burr yew, with a mahogany writing slide.

Pair of secretaire cabinets, with double doors enclosing pigeon holes and drawers, one on each fitted with ink bottles, above writing slides. The stands have a single drawer. The cabinets are in cedar, veneered in fiddle-back maple and burr yew, with a writing slide in mahogany. The secretaires are each fitted with four pigeon holes and five drawers. Below is a writing slide of mahogany which pulls out. The stand of each is connected by an X-stretcher and is fitted with castors.

This pair of small secretaires is minute in scale and they are typical of the small writing cabinets made for the use of ladies in the smaller boudoirs and sitting rooms that became fashionable in the second half of the eighteenth century. Such pieces were for show as much as for use. That they are made as a pair (and other are known, including a pair sold at Christie's 9 July 1992, lot 34) may suggest that they were made for sisters still in the family home.

A family of such secretaires, plus caskets and small pembroke tables appear regularly in sales, all showing the same spindly legs and the veneers of burr maple, often with burr yew in ovals, as here. In the past they have often been described as of satinwood but this appears to have been veneered in fiddle-back maple and other pieces in the group may well also be in this wood, although it has not been microscopically examined. This group of furniture has been associated with the famous firm of Ince and Mayhew, but there seems to be no evidence for this. The pieces have also been attributed to the workshop of Henry Kettle, who is known to have worked in St Paul's Churchyard from about 1773 to 1797. A somewhat similar pembroke table, carrying his label, is in the collections of the National Trust at Saltram House, near Plymouth, although it is a bit more robust in design. Some of the tables have 'harlequin' section that are raised by fitting and turning a handle at one end. These sections may be fitted for writing or sewing. An example of this form was illustrated in 'Late Georgian Furniture at Brocklesby', in Country Life 17 March 1934, pp. xlv-xlvii. On p. xlv the table is shown with the inset casket raised by means of the handle. The mechanism for a 'Harlequin Pembroke Table' was illustrated in Thomas Sheraton's The Cabinet-Maker and Upholsterer's Drawing-Book, published parts between 1791 and 1793 and as whole volume in 1802, plate 56 (engraved 1792). He gives a detailed description of the mechanism and says that the legs should be made stronger than usual because the table is 'pretty heavy altogether'. Clearly the maker of this group did not follow his advice, as all the pieces are made with very spindly legs, although for the secretaires, they are braced with x-stretchers.

Other pieces from this 'family' include:
A pembroke table in the collections of the Bowes Museum, Barnard Castle, once owned by the collector Avery Tipping.
A secretaire at Killadoon House, near Dublin
Another at Russborough House, Ireland
The pair of secretaires sold by Christie's in 1992, mentioned above.
A small dressing table, offerd for sale by W.R. Harvey & Co. Antiques of Witney, in 2001/2, when it was illustrated in the BADA Yearbook.
A pair of pembroke tables sold at Christie's, New York, 25 April 2008, lot 68
A single pembroke table sold Bonham's, London, 7 March 2003, lot 112

In 1938 the biscuit makers William Crawford & Sons Ltd., of Edinburgh and London, created a novelty biscuit tin in the form of a tea caddy or casket identical to the upper section of these secretaires. It is possible that the tins were modelled on another marquetry piece from the same group, but one of the V&A secretaires had formed part of a new display of 18th-century English furniture in 1936 in the Octagon Court, in Gallery 40 at the Museum and it is possible that the tin design was based on these pieces. The V&A collections were frequently used as inspiration by designers, as they are now. One such biscuit tin was sold by Lyon & Turnbull, Edinburgh, 24 October 2009, lot 196 and another by Fryer & Brown, Downside, 24 June 2015, lot 742.

In 1968 this cabinet and its pair were recorded as on long loan to the Graves Art Gallery in Sheffield.

This pair of writing cabinets looks almost too fragile to use, yet each cabinet is fitted with pigeon holes and drawers, one of them fitted with an inkwell. They are part of a family of small-scale furniture, of which each piece shows the same use of timbers, and especially of burr yew, which is used here on the oval panels. We do not know the name of the workshop that made these pieces but a somewhat similar table (though not quite so petite), in the National Trust Collection at Saltram, near Plymouth, bears the label of Henry Kettle, whose workshop was in St Paul's Churchyard from the 1770s to the 1790s.

At least one other pair of writing cabinets of this type are known. Such light furniture was often made for use by women, in the boudoirs and small sitting-rooms that became fashionable after 1750. Their elegance was possibly more for show than for use. Might the pair have been sold as a present for two sisters, still living at home?

In 1938, a printed tin biscuit box was made in the form of the upper part of these secretaires, for William Crawford & Sons Ltd, the biscuit manufacturer of London and Edinburgh. The designer may have based his tin on one of the cabinets, which had recently been re-displayed in Gallery 40 at the Museum Then, as now, the Museum collections were heavily used as a source for designers.

290&A-1876