Low cupboard, with single main panel to door veneered with floral marquetry; gilt-bronze mounts; marble slab; modified from an 18th-century corner cupboard

Shallow cupboard enclosing a marquetry panel from another object in the door front. Oblong with bevelled edges decorated in marquetry of various woods with a vase of roses, tulips, anenomes and other flowers on the front panel and with a wreath in the centre of the drawer above. Fitted with gilt bronze mountswith scrolling foliage, pateras, pendants and bands. A slab of of white Carrara marble on the top.

Bequeathed by John Jones

In the collection of John Jones, 95 Piccadilly, London before 1882, when it was bequeathed to the South Kensington Museum, forerunner of the V&A.

Originally part of a corner cupboard (<i>encoignure</i>), supplied by Gilles Joubert, the royal cabinet-maker (1689-1775) on 30 November 1773 for Pierre-Élisabeth de Fontanieu, the Controller-General of the Hôtel du Garde Meuble on the Place Louis XV, Paris (now the Place de la Concorde). Two similar cupboards were supplied (see below). De Fontainieu was very active in fitting out the Hôtel du Garde-Meuble, which contained not only his private apartments but workrooms, store rooms and even exhibition rooms, all dedicated to ordering and managing the furnishings needed for the royal palaces.

In 2024 Rufus Bird sent information about another cupboard in a private collection that appears to be the pair to the V&A cupboard. He quotes the entry in the royal inventory of the supply of 'Two cupboards in Indian wood with Flanders marble tops, 14 inches square and 32 inches high'. They were given the inventory number 2728 and normally this number would have been painted in large black numerals on the back of the pieces, but because these two cupboards have been altered since their making, this number is not longer visible. The second cupboard has been cut down from in a very similar way to the V&A cupboard. It bears similar mounts but the marquetry on the frieze has been replaced with cube marquetry (as has the marquetry on the door) and the frieze has been set with a rectangular gilt-bronze mount and the centre of the door set with an oval plaque of porcelain painted with children.

Rufus Bird reported that according to unpublished information from Carolyn Sargentson, the cupboards were altered from corner cupboards by Jean-Henri Riesener (1734-1806), the successor to Gilles Joubert as royal cabinet-maker, in 1784 but the alterations to the marquetry and to the decorative panels on the second cupboard must date from the mid-19th century in a further phase of work. Although the cupboards were technically supplied by Gilles Joubert, it is possible that he contracted the original work to Jean-Henri Riesener.

Originally part of a corner cupboard (encoignure) supplied by Jean-Henri Riesener (1734-1806) on 25 May 1773 for Monsieur Fontanieu, for his the Hotel du Garde Meuble on the Place Louis XV, Paris

This elegant little cupboard started out its life as a corner cupboard or encoignure, but was modified at some time between about 1850 and 1880, perhaps to make it a more desirable purchase for a smaller town house. It is stamped by the royal cabinet-maker Jean-Henri Riesener (1834-1806) and its marquetry of flowers in a vase, and of the lyre as the symbol of poetry on the smaller panel, is close to a description of a corner cupboard that he supplied in 1773 for Pierre-Elisabeth de Fontanieu (1730-84). Monsieur de Fontanieu was the Intendant et Contrôleur Général des Meubles de la Couronne - the director of the office that controlled all the furnishings of royal households, placing orders and keeping records of where each piece was. He ordered the corner cupboard for his own official residence in the Place Louis XV in Paris.

1082-1882