Coffer-shaped cabinet of solid and veneered oak (of two varieties), with gilt-bronze mounts and glazed door; the watered silk lining possibly original

Coffer-shaped cabinet, made with a carcase of oak, decorated with pollard oak and with gilt-bronze mounts. The coffered top section is 'blind' and the glazed door below opens on a red silk-lined interior. Solid and veneered oak (of two varieties) with gilt-bronze mounts and glazed door; the interior lined with the original(?) red watered silk

Purchased with assistance of the Art Fund, the Friends of the V&A, Raymond Burton, Clifford Grundle and Jeremy Ltd

This 'coffer' is one of two known survivors of an original set of four made for William Beckford (1760-1844) for the Scarlet Drawing Room at Lansdown Tower, Bath, between c.1831 and 1841.

The cabinets were probably designed by Beckford himself, in collaboration with his architect Henry Edmund Goodridge (1797-1864), and may have been manufactured by the Bath cabinet-making firm of English & Son.

William Beckford, the son of an immensely rich and highly cultivated sugar-planter, a pupil of Mozart and Sir William Chambers, and author of the celebrated Gothic novel Vathek , was also one of the most important collectors and patrons of his generation - distinguished from his contemporaries by his close involvement in the design of objects he commissioned. His most famous creation, the extravagant mock-Gothic Fonthill Abbey in Wiltshire, was built from the late 1790s on the site of his father's mansion Fonthill Splendens, but had to be sold, with its contents, in 1823 to pay off his accumulated debts.

Beckford afterwards moved to 20 Lansdown Crescent in Bath. About a mile uphill from the house he built Lansdown Tower in neo-Renaissance style to house his re-growing art collection. His executant architect there was H. E. Goodridge, the son of a successful Bath developer, who was himself to become Bath's most prominent 19th-century architect, largely on the strength of Beckford's early patronage. At Lansdown Tower he realized ideas outlined by Beckford, adopting a 'Greco-Italian' idiom in which (in the words of his son, A. S. Goodridge) 'the purity of the Greek and the freedom of the Romanesque were best combined' - in direct and deliberate contrast to the quintessentially Gothic style of Fonthill Abbey. This later taste is clearly reflected in the design of the coffer, both in its form - which seems to derive from a type of Roman sarcophagus - and in its decorative motifs: the treatment of the barrel-vaulted top evokes the surface of an Italian Renaissance door - with lozenges and turned 'studs' of solid oak overlaid on a 'marbled' surface of pollard oak; and the arch of the end façades is a near-direct quotation from Bramante (the internal façade of S. Maria della Grazie, Milan). Continuity with his earlier taste, however, is shown in the discreet but pervasive use of his own armorial emblems - the cinquefoil minutely carved in each of the turned studs.

The four coffers appear to have been in place in the Scarlet Drawing Room by 1833, apparently in a simpler guise at first. On 17 September 1833 Beckford wrote to his bookseller George Clarke:
The coffers are in their places in the Tower and fully answer my hopes and expectations. Never did I behold any piece of furniture half so striking and original.
In 1841 they were catalogued for sale (English & Fasana, Bath, 4-5 January 1841, lots 26-27), and enthusiastically described:
[Two pairs] of sarcophagus-headed coffers … of Riga and Pollard Oaks, … singularly beautiful in design and workmanship, and every part … finished with the greatest possible care, and the carving … most minute and exquisite. ….
They were apparently not sold, however (but see below), for later that year they (or possibly only two of them) were being refurbished for Beckford by the Bath cabinet-maker Edmund(?) English - clearly the same man as Fasana's saleroom partner - to whom Beckford wrote on 21 May:
Allow me to tell you that you ought to have spurred on the metal mongers long ago - I will not wait for them - it wd be better to finish all in wood - hoops, studs and moulding than wear out my soul in this manner - I must have the coffers in their places … [illegible] my return.
Beckford's decision to entrust the transformation of the coffers to English, combined with the very precise description of their materials in the 1841 catalogue, strongly suggests that English was also the original manufacturer. After Beckford's death the coffers, 'intended for the display of rare objects', were again catalogued for sale by English & Fasana (20-29 November 1845, lots 520-21), but again they were perhaps not sold, for in 1852 'Four oak Coffers, Dome tops' were inventoried among items belonging to Beckford's daughter Susan, Duchess of Hamilton, at Easton Park, Suffolk. By implication they had already become separated from their stands, and since then the other three coffers have also disappeared without trace.

In one of a series of interior views of Lansdown Tower, drawn by Willes Maddox after Beckford's death in 1844, the four coffers on stands are shown in the corners of the Scarlet Drawing Room. From these drawings - and from the surviving coffer itself - it is clear that Beckford's taste had become much subtler since the brilliance of his Fonthill period: he now favoured a warm red and ginger palette, and chose relatively sober oak cabinets to serve as a foil to the works of art inside.

The question of the subsequent history of the cabinets is still under investigation although two at least appear to have been bought by James Morrison at the 1841 sale and a sketch by the architect designer J.B. Papworth shows an idea for their arrangement at Morrison's house, Basildon Park, Berkshire (see reference to 2010 article below).

The other surviving cabinet retains its orginal stand (which the V&A cabinet does not). It appeared on the art market in 2010, and was acquired by the Beckford Tower Trust, Bath, in 2011.

Probably designed by William Beckford in collaboration with his architect H. E. Goodridge; probably made ca. 1831 by English & Son of Bath, who made alterations to it in 1841

This ‘coffer’ is one of an original set of four display cabinets on oak stands (its stand is now missing). The set was made for William Beckford (1760–1844), probably to his own design, for Lansdown Tower, Bath. Beckford was the son of an immensely rich and highly cultivated sugar-planter, and himself became one of the most important collectors and patrons of his generation. His most famous creation, the extravagant mock-Gothic Fonthill Abbey in Wiltshire, was built from the late 1790s on the site of his father’s mansion Fonthill Splendens. In 1823, however, Fonthill Abbey and its contents had to be sold to pay off Beckford’s accumulated debts.

Beckford afterwards moved to 20 Lansdown Crescent in Bath. About a mile uphill from the house he built Lansdown Tower in neo-Renaissance style to house his re-growing art collection. He collaborated with his architect H. E. Goodridge to design the interiors and furnishings, including the set of coffers on stands, which stood in the corners of the ‘Scarlet Drawing Room’. They housed some of Beckford’s most precious works of art, their sober, ginger palette serving as a foil to the glittering objects of gilt metail and colourful hardstone that they contained.

In 1841 the coffers were altered for Beckford by the Bath cabinet-making firm of English & Son. It is likely that they had also made the coffers in their original form, about ten years earlier.

W.3:1, 2-2006