Bureau cabinet, Japanned with Chinoiserie on a red ground, with engraved brass mounts. Probably British, ca.1735.

Summary description
A small bureau cabinet, Japanned with Chinoiserie scenes in gold on a red ground, with engraved brass mounts. It has a single door faced with an arched mirror, a lower stage of bombé form and silvered paw feet.

Structure
The bureau cabinet is in three parts. The upper stage has a single door opening to the right inset with a bevelled, arched mirror glass, to reveal five small drawers on either side with a central cupboard above a small drawer and an open pigeonhole below. Above the fitted drawers is an open cupboard fitted with a single shelf.

The central stage comprises a fall-front lined with velvet on the inside face, opening to rest on lopers at either side and revealing four drawers with ring handles arranged around three open pigeonholes. Underneath the fall-front is a wide drawer with loop handles. There is a pull-out candle slide on each side in oak lipped with beech.

The lower stage comprises three long drawers with brass loop handles with a pull-out folding table above, which is released from underneath by opening the upper drawer. The slide opens out on hinges to double its size. The lower stage rests on a bracket terminating in four carved and silvered hairy-paw feet. There are brass loop carrying handles on both sides of all three stages and acanthus-leaf mounts screwed onto the front outer bombé corners.

The drawer-fronts appear to be made of oak, with a veneer of fruitwood, possibly pearwood, to provide a smooth ground for the japanning.

Decoration
All the exterior surfaces are decorated with red japanning, on which Chinoiserie scenes are applied in raised gilded gesso and gold paint. The decorative motifs are in raised gesso on the exterior surfaces and the drawer fronts. They are contained within borders of gold painted diaper patterns and running ornament. The japanned decoration appears to be in excellent original condition.

The decoration on the folding slide is painted on without the use of gesso. It is decorated on the upper and inner sides.

The interiors of all the drawers are painted pale blue with a yellow varnished surface. This is marked and stained. Conservation assessment of whether the varnish has become yellow with age or whether there is yellow pigment in the varnish, is inconclusive. Such varnish would yellow with age even inside the drawer without light, but it is possible that there is some pigment which could not be seen under a microscope. The blue colour inside the drawer contained smalt.

The japanned surface was investigated in 2006, and found to have a layer of vermilion (red) colour over the wood, followed by a layer of resin, then three layers of resin mixed with red lake. A top layer of shellac was probably added during later conservation. In the raised and gilded areas there were additional layers of gesso, resin, gold leaf with a shellac surface layer. The black lines were found to have, over the gold leaf, a layer of resin, black pigment and shellac. All of the materials used were available in the 18th century. The resin used is natural, probably sandarac, juniper or copal. Some areas had been retouched using the same method.

The back of the cabinet is painted black.

All the handles appear to be original with no evidence of replacements. The brass fittings are engraved with leaf ornament.

Bequeathed by Sylvia Maud Cowles in memory of her brother John George Thorn-Drury

The early history of this cabinet is not known. It was bequeathed to the V&A in 1972 by Mrs S.M. Cowles in memory of her brother John Thorn-Drury. Mrs Cowles at that time lived in a flat in Chelsea, London. The bureau was accepted by the Museum as 'a charming cabinet of the sort that fetches a great deal of money today'.

Such a particularly small bureau cabinet may have been made with a particular type of interior in mind. In Edinburgh, in the first half of the 18th century, a number of similarly small cabinets were made, by George Riddell, Francis Brodie, and possibly others. It is thought that those were specifically designed for the rather small appartments in the Old Town of Edinburgh, before the expansive New Town was built. See Sebastian Pryke, 'In my lady's chamber', Country Life, vol. CCXII, no. 32, 22 August 2018, pp. 84-5. The cabinets illustrated there share the single, mirrored door, the fitted interior and the lower drawers with this cabinet, but they do not have sloped fronts to a separate writing compartment. In Germany in the first half of the 18th century, there was a fashion for larger scale cabinets with single mirrored doors, close in form to the V&A example. See V&A W.62-1979 for one decorated with japanning on a blue ground.

It is not yet clear whether this cabinet is British or German. The burea-bookcase is a typically English form, but became extremely popular form in the German states, where English furniture exerted a strong influence. Saxony was particularly open to foreign influences. In the 1730s Dresden in Saxony became a centre for the production of japanned bureau-bookcases with brass-mounted bombé lower sections, in both red and black japanning.

However, there is also a possibility that it might have been made in Edinburgh. Japanned furniture is known to have been made in Edinburgh in the early 18th century, where small-scale furniture was also made to suit the rooms within narrow townhouses. This bureau-bookcase is in remarkably good condition, all the exterior surfaces being decorated with red japanning on which Chinoiseries scenes are applied in raised gesso and gold paint. The good condition and and its relatively small size have raised the question whether it might have been been made at the end of the 19th century in an earlier style. However other 18th-century examples of a comparably small size are known, and extensive investigation has shown that all the techniques used are consistent with an 18th-century date.

W.8:1 to 9-1972