German, rosewood, coralwood and ebony, inlaid with ivory, boar's tusk and bone, made for Bernhard, Duke of Saxe-Meiningen, 1683

A rectangular travelling desk of oak and pine venereed in rosewood and ebony and coralwood (Adenanthera pavonina), and with borders in ebonised fruitwood, with marquetry of boar's tusk and bone decorated with black penwork, including the arms and monogram of Duke Bernhard of Saxe-Meiningen. On a stand with turned fruitwood legs.

Design (exterior)
The desk in the form of a flat rectangular box with hinged lid (the internal hinges set at 3/4 of the depth of the lid), and hinged drop-front, with marquetry of tusk and bone (engraved and emphasised with black paste) on a rosewood ground, as follows:
lid exterior - centrally, a coat of arms within a laurel wreath, surrounded by a white border in hexagonal sections, short and long, and with matching corner compartments containing fleshy, scrolling stems;
front and back - with three long hexagonal compartments containing fleshy, scrolling stems and a stag (front left), a stag brought down by a hound (front centre), a fox chased by a hound (front right), and a deer (back centre);
sides - with two hexagonal compartments containing fleshy, scrolling stems, and a central diamond with a lion passant.
The lid with a deep, mitred, ogee ripple moulding; around the base of the box, a mitred ripple moulding.
The underside fitted with four softwood locator battens, the front and back battens each with two holes, presumably to receive a rod securing the desk to the stand (as originally made). The rear batten has broken at one hole. Two metal strip plates are screwed to the underside, the purpose of which is unclear.
The fall front is fitted with two internal steel hinges, two sliding catches (immobile, 11/2013) and a long lock to receive two inserts mounted on the lid, operated from a single, central keyhole.

Stand
The stand with an undecorated top frame, resting on four legs of ebonised fruitwood, turned with balls (centred on a large ball), which stand on flat bun feet; with an elongated X-shape veneered stretcher with a central four-pointed marquetry star.
There are holes in the upper frame of the stand into which long screws could fit, to secure the deks to the stand.

Design (interior)
Along the back of the box is a bank of eight drawers, arranged in two rows. The underside of the lid witha central, nearly symmetrical motif of fleshy scrolling stems, surrounded by geometric compartments, the four corner compartments with fleshy, scrolling stems. The design on the bottom of the box (visible when it is open) includes the fall front: a large central compartment with corner motifs of fleshy, scrolling stems, surrounded by geometric hexagonal and diamond compartments, the matching corner compartments containing fleshy, scrolling stems, (the diamonds each containing a square engraved with a flower head, some much worn). The sides each with a hexagonal compartment containing a lion passant, with a shield (on the left containing BHZS, a crown and a shield; on the right BHZS, a crown over a bird).

Construction
Softwood and oak, presumed to be joined using a variety of glued joints. Ellwood describes 'the ingenious use of a cross-grained oak frame or clamp around the pine carcase...'
The eight internal drawers of oak (stained dark inside), the front and back jointed to the sides with a tongue jointed to a groove in the sides and glued, with the drawer bottoms glued up. The oak drawer front is veneered with rosewood(?) and engraved bone, and with mitred, ripple mouldings, and a knob of turned wood. The dustboards are softwood, veneered on their face. Vertical drawer dividers are of solid hardwood.
The stand with an upper frame of lapped softwood (replacement using old timber), into which turned fruitwood legs on flat bun feet are tenoned. The feet are united by an elongated X-frame softwood stretcher veneered with rosewood, with a four-pointed marquetry star (apparently using ebony, bone, rosewood and coralwood).

The wrought iron lock is late 17th century German, probably Augsburg or Nuremberg (Anthony North, 1998). The key a modern replacement.

Materials (as recorded by Giles Ellwood, 1997)
Oak-framed softwood carcase, with drawer linings in oak, and divisions in softwood. The ripple moulded borders and legs of ebonised pearwood. Inlays of the bones and teeth of wild boar.

A long and now virtually illegible pencil inscription on the drawer case includes the date 1683 (twice) and the words 'Schenkung' (present) and 'Meiningen', the latter in reference to the original owner Duke Bernhard I of Saxe-Meiningen (1649-1706).

Recent restoration, recorded by Albert Neher (Furniture Conservation), 2001
Three small elements of the coat-of-arms, and short sections of stringing were replaced with boar's bone and tusk. The upper frame of the stand into which the desk sockets is a modern replacement using old pine. The veneered surfaces of the desk appear never to have been stripped or re-polished.

Purchased with the assistance of the National Heritage Memorial Fund, Art Fund, and a number of private donations.

Herzog Bernhard I of Saxe-Meiningen married Elisabeth Eleanore of Braunschweig-Wolfenbüttel on 25th February 1681, and this desk was presented to him in June 1683, probably by his father-in-law Herzog Anton Ulrich of Braunschweig-Wolfenbüttel, probably to mark the foundation of 'Elisabethenburg', also known as Schloss Meiningen, which was laid in that year.

A near pair, with red penwork, made for Duchess Elisabeth whose initials E.E.H.Z.S appear on the interior, arrived in the following year, 1684. Constructional details and identical locks indicate that the two desks were made in the same workshop (Ellwood pp.43-44), but probably not at the same time. No detailed inventories of the Schloss exist, but Ellwood suggests that the 1684 desk may have been made for one of the rooms allocated for Duchess Elizabeth's use, perhaps occupying a window pier, to support the opened top, with candle stands on either side. While the 1684 desk was 'improved' by a Meiningen carver in the late 19th century, W.666-2001 was not, and this may indicate that it had already left the house. The Saxe-Meiningens abdicated in 1918, and sometime afterwards sold the other desk to the dealer/auctioneer Nagel of Manheim, who sold it in 1928 to the Reissmuseum in Mannheim, where it remains. W.666-2001 also belonged to the Guthe family on North Yorkshire until 1997, and probably throughout the 20th century, but its date of acquisition is not recorded, and the former owner is dead.

Given its somewhat controversial Anglo-German ancestry, it seems highly unlikely that the Guthe family would have acquired any explicitly German works of art after WW1, let alone WW2. Furthermore, no member of the family is known to have actively collected art at any date, and by the late 1930s, when the Nazi confiscations began in Germany, the chance of an inheritance from their by now very distant (and presumably estranged) German relatives is extremely remote.

The maker of this armorial travelling desk (Reise-Schreibitisch) for Bernhard Duke of Saxe-Meiningen (1649-1706) remains unknown, but an inscription on the carcase supplies a date of 20th June 1683, and refers to the marriage (25th February 1681) between Duke Bernhard and Elizabeth-Eleanore of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel (1658-1729). It forms a pair with another unsigned travelling desk (Mannheim, Reissmuseum), bearing the Duke's arms and Duchess Elizabeth-Eleanor's initials (E.E.H.Z.S.) and dated 1684. These two are stylistically related to several other surviving pieces:
A strong-box (Schloss Wolfenbüttel, Heimatmuseum), made 1653 for the Wolfenbüttel cabinet-makers' guild; with auricular inlays very similar to the Meiningen desk.
A strong-box (Brunswick, Stadtmuseum) dated 1681, made for the Brunswick brewers' guild.
A writing desk (Berlin, Kunstgewerbemuseum) dated 1694, made for Bernhard's father-in-law, Duke Anton-Ulrich of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel.

A design for a fashionabel desk similar to the Meiningen desk was included in J.C.Senckheisen: Leipziger Architecture-Kunst-und Säulen-Buch (Leipzig, 1707), suggesting that the Meiningen desks must have been 'strikingly novel at their debut in the early 1680s.' (Ellwood p.50).

Whereas Meiningen was never a centre for ivory- or bone-inlaid furniture, Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel (c.200km north of Meiningen) was famous for it by c.1650.

This travelling desk is an important example of the bold and handsome design of German furniture of the Baroque period. Although trade with Asia was concentrated in the maritime states of England, the Netherlands and Scandinavia, the German princely courts made enthousiastic use of the new materials available through trade. Here the Indian rosewood, coralwood and the ebony have been combined not with ivory but with the domestically available bone and boar's tusk.

Germany is the fount of European cabinet-making: its products were widely exported and its craftsmen most sought after in the royal courts of Europe. Many of the greatest French ébénistes of the 18th century hailed from Germany: despite obstructive Guild Regulations, they formed a vitally important part of the cabinet-making trade in Paris, because their standards of workmanship were so high. Duke Bernhard's travelling desk has undergone no significant alterations, and would serve as an unparalleled example of German cabinet-making in the preceding century.

This desk, made in 1683 and veneered with assorted materials, is a very rare example of dated German furniture of the second half of the 17th century. German cabinetmakers were among the best in Europe, and they were also employed in the most important workshops in France, Spain and Italy. This desk was made for Bernhard Duke of Saxe-Meiningen (1649–1706), and bears his initials and coat of arms. A similar piece made in 1684, now in a German museum, bears the arms of the Duke and the initials of his wife, Elizabeth-Eleanore Von Braunschweig-Wolfenbüttel (1658–1729), whom he married in 1681. Both desks were almost certainly made for the Duke’s palace, Elisabethenburg, in Meiningen, which he renamed in honour of his bride and radically transformed between 1682 and about 1692.

W.666:1 to 11-2001