Two-door mahogany cupboard of architectural form, with applied carved decoration, the doors flanked by pilasters surmounted by female busts; converted from a larger clothes press designed by Robert Adam, made (and converted) by John Cobb, with carvings by Sefferin Alken, 1764-67

Design
A large mahogany cupboard with two doors enclosing twenty drawers, decorated on the front with applied carvings of classical ornament, including two caryatid pilasters flanking the doors. The cupboard is of architectural design, the doors and pilasters raised on a plinth of dado height, and supporting a deep frieze and cornice. It is designed to be read primarily as a façade.

The doors are each divided into one tall panel between two small top and bottom panels, all framed by an enriched cyma reversa moulding. They are decorated with foliate arabesque ornament, centred on an urn in each main panel, a smaller urn in each top panel and a pair of addorsed griffin terms, with scrolling tails, in each bottom panel. The tapering pilasters on either side are decorated with interlaced drops of laurel leaves enclosing rosettes, with a larger rosette in the blocking above, and a plain, short moulded plinth below. Above the blocking, the full-frontal female bust, in high relief, is carved with long locks of hair tied across her breast and with a collar of formal lambrequins over loosely folded drapery. The frieze above, separated from the doors by a torus moulding, is carved with alternating splayed foliate palmettes (including one in each blocking above the pilasters) and enclosed anthemia (stylized honeysuckle), linked at the bottom by eight elongated S-scrolls. The cornice is carved with a series of mouldings – in ascending order, leaf-and-dart, dentil, fascia, waterleaf and a larger, inverted variant of leaf-and-dart. In this large top moulding each end of the long middle section is oddly left plain – perhaps resulting in some way from the adaptation of the cupboards. The plain plinth, finished beneath the doors by a guilloche torus moulding and a cyma reversa moulding, is faced with two leaf paterae above two wide swags of husks tied by three ribbon bows.

The cupboard sides are minimally decorated with panels and mouldings corresponding to those on the façade, but with no applied carvings.

The doors, the frieze, the cupboard sides and the plinth are veneered in mahogany, which is mitred at the corners of the doors and cupboard sides. All of the ornament is carved separately and applied to the veneered surfaces, or to the solid mahogany in the case of the pilasters.

The interior of the cupboard is fitted from top to bottom with mahogany-fronted drawers, in two tiers of ten, each with a single brass bail-handle.

Construction
The cupboard is made in three principal sections: the plinth, including the mouldings at the top; the two-door cupboard section, excluding the mouldings at top and bottom; and the entablature, including the torus moulding above the doors. The cupboard houses twenty drawers, in two tiers of ten, but there is no access to the plinth or the entablature. The two tiers of drawers are each housed in separate cases, reflecting the origin of this cupboard as two wings of the original clothes press.

Condition
In both side sections of the cornice, the back half is a replacement, very coarsely carved. Probably the cupboard was at one time fitted into a tight recess, and the cornice cut out for this purpose. On the foliate motif above the right bust, the top tip is also replaced.

Adam produced two coloured drawings of a 'Cloaths [sic] Press for the Earl of Coventry', one of which is dated 2 October 1764 (London, Sir John Soane's Museum, Vol. XVII (nos. 212 - 213)), for which he charged his client £7 7s. (£7.35p.), with an additional £2 2s. (£2.10p.) for "drawing at large of the ornaments and mouldings of ditto" (that is, full-scale drawings of the ornamental details). As Adam's Bill of June 1765 (Croome Court Estate Office) states, the clothes press was intended for "My Lady's Bedchamber" at Coventry House.

John Cobb charged £137 12s. (£137.60p.) for the manufacture of the original press in his bill of 26 February 1766 (Croome Court Estate Office, F60/29) The entry for the press reads

‘For a Large Mahogany Wardrobe, 26 Drawers and 13 Sliding Shelves in the middle part with pannel Doors before the Drawers and Shelves in bottom and top part, a Dental Cornice and 4 Terms in front and a fret in the Attic parts, and fixing on all the Carved Ornaments on the pannel, &c, Extra good Locks to lock twice, and a Master Engravd Key and fixing up the whole in the Roome Compleate 129,, ,, ,,

For Lineing the Shelves with Baize and Baize Flaps to Ditto 3,, 12,, ,,

April 12th

For Varnishing the Large Wardrobe in the Roome 5,, ,, ,,’



While the cost included "fixing on all the Carved Ornaments", no charge was made for the carvings themselves, which must have been subcontracted. Although no document has yet been found to prove conclusively that they are the work of Sefferin Alken, there aremany bills for elaborate and extensive carving that he produced for the Earl of Coventry’s country house at Croome Court, Worcestershire, including other collaborations with John Cobb. On this evidence, combined with the very high quality of the applied carvings, it seems almost certain that he was the carver.

The press was originally made for Lady Coventry’s bedroom at Coventry House, Piccadilly (now no. 106) in 1766. It was different in several respects from the original Adam design. The most obvious change was in the width of the panels, which in the design were narrower in the two centre sections than in the two outer. All four were made the same width and the carving in the centre panels was extended to fill the space, while the carving of the small panels at the base of the doors was changed to a new design. In the frieze the fluted sections above the pilasters were changed to continue the theme of alternating palmettes and anthemia. The attic (top) section does not survive, but Cobb’s bill records it only as ‘a fret’, so it had probably been made simpler than the vase-topped gallery of the drawing. The widening of the central section had implications for the design of the base, because its centre also became appreciably wider, making the original single door design impractical. This was changed to two doors, each with a strigilated panel (carved with serpentine channels) centred by a mask.

The press must have almost immediately been found to be too large for the room and was soon altered. In May 1767 Robert Adam submitted a bill for £1 1s (£1.05) for a ‘Design for altering Great Clothes Press’ and on 29 June Cobb charged £1. 16s (£1.80) ‘For men’s time taking down the large Wardrobe, and porteridge with do to my house’. On 12 September he submitted a new bill for £96. This covered the cost of entirely dismantling the press and remaking it in four separate parts.

The section behind the main cupboard doors was made into two tall presses with new plinths, while the lower part was made into two dado-height presses of sarcophagus form Cobb’s bill records the following work:
‘To taking the large Wardrobe to pieces, taking away the Bottom part, Making it into two with Carv’d Ends and Mouldings, Making the Top part into two with a Carv’d Cornice & Carved Ends and a large Plinth to each with Carv’d swags of Husks, & varnishing the whole and putting up do Compleat’.
The new tall presses were apparently placed at the head of the main stairs at either side of the door into Lady Coventry’s bedroom. There is no record of where the two lower parts were placed. The V&A cupboard was formed from the two outer sections of the original clothes press and the middle section was made into the companion cupboard which is now at Bolling Hall, Bradford. A third section, made from the base of the centre, was rediscovered when it was offered for auction in Edinburgh in February 2022 [report in the V&A files].


The press as executed in 1766 different in several respects from the original Adam design. The most obvious change was in the width of the panels, which in the design were narrower in the two centre sections than in the two outer. All four were made the same width and the carving in the centre panels was extended to fill the space, while the carving of the small panels at the base of the doors was changed to a new design. In the frieze the fluted sections above the pilasters were changed to continue the theme of alternating palmettes and anthemia. The attic section does not survive, but Cobb’s bill records it only as ‘a fret’, so it was probably simpler than the vase-topped gallery of the drawing. The widening of the central section had implications for the design of the base, because its centre also became appreciably wider, making the original single door design impractical. This was changed to two doors, each with a strigilated panel centred by a mask.

When the press was remade the ‘attic’ story was omitted (if it had ever existed as Adam had drawn it). The centre of the main cupboard section remained unaltered except for having new sides and new returns to the cornice, and it was placed on a new base ‘Carv’d with swags of husks’ (this is the press now at Bolling Hall). The two outer sections of the main cupboards were joined to form the press now at the V&A. The evidence for their having been originally in two parts is visible behind, where there is a join between the two cases. The cornice was remade and the base added, as for the centre section. Externally, the two presses now made a matching pair although their internal arrangement is different. The one now at the V&A is fitted with drawers,while the one at Bolling Hall has shelves. The two lower presses must also have been a matching pair, again with one having three shelves and the other six drawers inside.

By 1909 both tall cupboards had been moved to Combe Abbey, Warwickshire, the seat of the 4th Earl of Craven, who was a great nephew by marriage of the 9th Earl of Coventry. One of them is illustrated in the Bohemian Room (in an article on the house published in Country Life, 11 November 1909). They were acquired in April 1923 by Lord Leverhulme for £400 and sold from his house in Hampstead, The Hill, in February 1926. The 6th Earl of Craven, who had bought them back at an unknown date, sold them at Sotheby's London on 8 October 1965 for £1,300 (Lot 138). They were loaned by M. E. Behrens to the Victoria & Albert Museum in 1969, but sold by him through Christie's on 1 December 1977. When the Reviewing Committee on the Export of Works of Art put a temporary stop on their export, the V & A purchased one of the pair and Bolling Hall the other (inventory number D8/1978).

The two base parts perhaps remained at Coventry House when it was sold to Mayer Amschel de Rothschild in 1843 and may have been sold at the auction of the contents of Coventry House house in 1854. One of these parts, made from the original base section, was acquired by the Swinton family of Kimmerghame House, Berwickshire at an unknown date and was sold at auction in Edinburgh in February 2022 (Lyon & Turnbull, 25 February 2022, lot 12. Report in the V&A files). The fourth part has yet to be rediscovered.

Historical significance: The Coventry House cupboard is an exceptionally well documented piece designed by the architect Robert Adam and executed by John Cobb. Both architect and cabinet-maker were leading members of their professions, and Adam's work at for the Earl of Coventry at both Coventry House, London, and Croome Court, Worcestershire, was one of his longest-lasting and most important commissions. Indeed the 7th Earl of Coventry, who commissioned this piece, was a pallbearer at Robert Adam's funeral in 1794. Although by no means the first British architect to design furniture for his interiors (William Talman, William Kent and James Gibbs all did so before him), Adam's attention stretched to unprecedentedly small details. This cupboard is an important example of Robert Adam's earlier designs: the solid and statuesque nature of this piece, particularly the female figures, is reminiscent of the designs of William Kent. Adam may well have borrowed the female-term motif supporting the frieze from Kent's design for an organ case, published in an engraving by John Vardy in about 1744. At the same time, the scrolling arabesques in the carving are based on a panel in the rotunda at the Villa Pamphili, which Adam saw and drew during his stay in Rome during 1757. His drawing of this is the V&A (Museum No. D362 - 1885). This style of decoration was becoming fashionable in France during the 1760s: similar arabesques were included in schemes attributed to Pierre-Noël Rousset, proposed for the Hôtel Uzès, Paris. In Adam's work, the ornament on the doors of this cabinet anticipates his much more profuse use of arabesque ornament in the 1770s and 1780s.

Countless pieces of furniture are altered in the course of their use. It is most significant - and rarely recorded - that a surviving piece on this scale should have been altered within less than a year, and by the same firm, that produced the original.

A talk was given on this object as part of the 'Heroic Failures' talk series for London Design Festival 2017 at the V&A, by Leela Meinertas on 20 September 2017.

The original clothes press was made in 1766 to Robert Adam’s design by the firm of John Cobb (after the retirement of Willliam Vile from their partnership). The applied carvings were almost certainly supplied by the specialist carver Sefferin Alken. In 1767 the press was converted by John Cobb to form four cupboards (of which W.20-1978 is one). Alken apparently made no new contribution to the converted cupboards, and the swags on the new plinth do not look like his work.

Without the very full records that survive relating to this magnificent cupboard, we would have no idea that it has been radically altered. It began life as part of a much larger wardrobe, designed by the architect Robert Adam in 1764 for Coventry House, Piccadilly, the London house of George William, 6th Earl of Coventry. The wardrobe was made in the workshops of the London cabinet-maker John Cobb in 1766, but the following year Cobb converted it into four smaller cupboards, of which this is one.

Adam’s original design drawing survives, so we know that the original wardrobe may have had a further ‘attic’ storey, above the cornice, as well as a higher, more architectural base. The present cupboard is formed from the two outer sections of the original wardrobe and is supported on the new plinth made for it in 1767.

The carved ornaments were made separately and applied to Cobb’s case work. They are exceptionally vivacious and refined and were almost certainly supplied by the specialist carver Sefferin Alken, who regularly carved ornaments for furniture made in the workshops of Cobb and his partner William Vile (who retired in 1764). The carving on the new plinth is competent but not of the same high quality, and was most probably executed in John Cobb’s workshop at the time of the alteration.

W.20:1 to 24-1978