This carved mahogany golf cabinet, circa 1910, is stamped Hindley and Wilkinson, London. It is apparently the only known item of fine antique furniture that is set with golf clubs as a decorative device. The design is very much derived from the Chippendale oeuvre with tapering Gothicized corner columns which have tightly conceived acanthus capitals. The paired carved golf clubs are wittily and imaginatively treated being in the form of crossed foliated “trophies.” The piece must have been a very costly special commission in its time and was presumably made for one of the early golfing professionals or a wealthy enthusiast.   Carlton Hobbs LLC. The Wilkinson firm of furniture manufacturers founded by Joshua Wilkinson in 1778 passed through the hands of four Wilkinson generations over a period of one hundred and fifty years. From their Cheapside premises in London Wilkinson and Sons advertised themselves as a ‘Cabinet, Upholstery, Carpet and Looking Glass Warehouse’, and indicated that their stock included ‘down, goose and other feather beds; Turkey, Brussels, Wilton, Kidderminster and Scotch carpets; library, writing, ladies’ dressing, Pembroke card, and tea tables; cabriole, japanned and Windsor chairs etc.’ By the number of men employed it is evident that there was a fairly extensive manufacturing side to their business. The amount of insurance coverage also provides an indication that the enterprise was of substantial size. In 1788 stock and utensils were valued at 300 pounds out of a total insurance coverage of 1500 pounds.

Detail of the cabinet.

In 1909 the firm’s Old Bond Street building was demolished, and the company, re-named Hindley and Wilkinson, relocated to 70/71 Welbeck Street. It is not known whether Frederick Wilkinson’s son Charles remained with the business, bringing in Hindley as a partner, or whether it was sold to Hindley who maintained the Wilkinson name for continuity. In any event, the business was eventually absorbed by Marshall & Snellgrove in about 1918.

Carlton Hobbs has been honored to present an exceptional piece of art furniture made by the eminent conservator and ébéniste, Yannick Chastang. It is the first time Carlton Hobbs has marketed a piece by a contemporary designer, and we feel this cabinet is relevant to our collection as it embodies the artistry and quality of the Golden Age of cabinetmaking, whose final flourishing was the Art Deco period of the 1920s and 30s. Although small pockets of high quality production still exist, this cabinet, in its conception, has an exceptional understanding of subtlety and restraint, redolent of late 18th century French design. The quality is undoubtedly informed by Mr. Chastang’s years of working on the greatest examples of 18th century Gallic pieces.

This collector’s cabinet, fitted with 14 drawers behind a pair of marquetry doors, is an uncompromising, luxurious piece of furniture. Its shape is strongly influenced by the furniture made during the 1920s by Jacques-Emile Ruhlmann (1879-1933) while the marquetry decoration finds its source in the great lacquer works produced in Japan during the 17th century, so well known for the quality of their drawing and understanding of space. The interior of the cabinet is fitted with drawers made of a bright and naturally occurring pink/red wood from Mozambique, commonly known as pink ivory, which offers a striking contrast against the dark ebony exterior. This is reminiscent of the ebony cabinets of the 17th century which were often internally veneered in a rich red turtle shell hidden behind two ebony doors.

The simplicity of this cabinet’s form belies its complex construction. The cabinet is fashioned from some of the hardest woods available today and many technical difficulties needed to be overcome in order to realise the elegant design. The piece of furniture is in itself a triumph of craftsmanship, confronting head-on the innate limitations of difficult techniques and materials. Although the construction of this cabinet is traditional, showing typical 18th century oak frame construction on the back, the internal construction, invisible to the viewer, is made using the latest materials and technology, which have been chosen for their strength and stability. The two doors, in order to be rigid, stable and light, are made of aluminium honeycomb which is concealed beneath the solid ebony edges and the marquetry.

As most species of wood used on this cabinet are extremely hard to work, all veneers have been saw cut at a thickness three times thicker than the commonly available commercial veneers, resulting in a more stable and also a more colourful marquetry. The thickness and hardness of the veneer meant that the marquetry could only be cut using the traditional piercing saw and marquetry donkey technique. Even the strongest laser beam, now commonly used when making marquetry, would not be able to cut through the hard ebony veneer. This cabinet, unique in its design and quality of veneer, took over 900 hours of work to complete in Yannick Chastang’s workshop in Kent, UK.

Yannick Chastang studied cabinet-making and marquetry at the Ecole Boulle in Paris for six years. Following graduation he gained work experience in conservation and cabinet making workshops in France and in the United States. In 1995 he became a junior conservator at the Musée des Arts Decoratifs, Paris. From 1997 to 2003 Yannick Chastang was Furniture Conservator at the Wallace Collection in London where he enjoyed the privilege of conserving some of the best pieces of furniture ever produced. In 2003 Yannick Chastang set up his own studio specialising in the conservation and making of fine marquetry furniture, working for public and private collections. Yannick Chastang also advises private collectors on buying antique furniture. His publications include the book Paintings in Wood: French Marquetry Furniture, the Wallace Collection (2001), and many articles on history and making of marquetry furniture.

Nostell Priory. © The National Trust 2003-05

Nostell Priory is a Palladian house in Nostell, West Yorkshire, built on the site of a medieval priory.  The estate was purchased by the Winn family in the 1650’s and that family has lived there ever since construction began on the present building in 1733, to a design based on Palladio’s Villa Mocenigo.  The house retains extensive work by the celebrated architects and designers James Paine and Robert Adam, with decorative painting by A. Zucchi and a collection of furniture by Thomas Chippendale. The Nostell Priory breakfront side cabinets designed by Thomas Ward. Carlton Hobbs LLC.

The home remained largely unaltered through the end of the 18th century until Charles Winn began improvements at the house, which were carried out between 1819-36.  In the Carlton Hobbs LLC collection, we have a pair of breakfront cabinets made during this rare period of activity and refurbishing at Nostell Priory.  They were almost certainly designed by Thomas Ward of Frith Street and were supplied for the breakfast room, which he redecorated entirely from 1819 to 1821. One of the cabinets in situ, the Breakfast Room, Nostell Priory, 1915.

These cabinets are constructed of solid Goncalo Alves, a rare and expensive timber, which, in its color and figuring, lies midway between mahogany and rosewood.  The making of these cabinets was obviously a long and costly project.  The detailed carving runs to over two hundred feet in length; in addition much attention has been paid to the elaborate grills and the quirky ball-and-spire alternating with trefoil design of the gallery. Detail of the superb carving.

In her recent book, Penwork: A Decorative Phenomenon, Noël Riley explores the techniques, influences, and social contexts from which the art developed. An invention of the 17th century, penwork, was a technique of painting initially meant to imitate the lacquer of the Far East but which grew to include painted simulation of ivory inlay, scagliola and papier-mâché.1 We were excited to see a photo of one of our cabinets in the Chinoiserie chapter of the book on page 129!

In her recent book, Penwork: A Decorative Phenomenon, Noël Riley explores the techniques, influences, and social contexts from which the art developed. An invention of the 17th century, penwork, was a technique of painting initially meant to imitate the lacquer of the Far East but  which grew to include painted simulation of ivory inlay, scagliola and papier-mâché.1 We were excited to see a photo of one of our cabinets in the Chinoiserie chapter of the book on page 129!

The highly unusual painted decoration of the cabinet, which has been remarkably well preserved, draws its inspiration from the rich decorative vocabulary of 18th century chinoiserie, combining these elements in a unique and imaginative way. The graceful figures to the front panels, in balanced but differing poses, offer a more artistic technique than the often formulaic approach of Regency designers and are closer to the work of the celebrated early eighteenth-century cabinet maker and lacquer-worker Giles Grendey (1693 – 1780). The pagodas which decorate the sides of the cabinet were a fashionable element in the exotic royal and aristocratic interiors of the Regency period, yet  have their roots in 18th century Chinoiserie.

The decoration of the cabinet further departs from the convention of the Regency in the subtle coloration of the painted scheme. In being limited to two colors, it follows the theory of grisaille decoration, again in diametric opposition to the vividly colored schemes of the Regency. Finally, the script on the top of the cabinet is a highly unusual and inventive conceit and was intended to be seen as Chinese, however the individual characters are an invention and cannot be read. These decorative themes, accompanied by the subtle 18th century form of the cabinet, make it a very fine George III example of chinoiserie furniture in penwork.

Footnote: 1. Riley, Noël. Penwork: A Decorative Phenomenon. West Yorkshire: Oblong Creative Ltd., 2008. ix.

English. Circa 1815. The design of the present cabinets, called 'dwarf cabinets' by contemporaries, exemplifies the influence of French taste on English design during the Regency period. Such cabinets drew on the Empire formula of a shallow cupboard with paired doors flanked by columns or pilasters. However, the typically stylised carved lotus capitals and the intensity of the design of the extremely fine gilt brass elements to the doors mark the cabinets out as distinctly English. The most striking feature of these cabinets is their beautifully figured maple surface. Known as Bird’s-eye maple because of its delicate mottling, evident in the present pieces, the wood was imported from Canada, where timbers were obtained from New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island and Nova Scotia.

English. Circa 1810. This magnificent cabinet is a handsome example of furniture employing lacquer decoration made in England at the start of the nineteenth century. The taste for lacquer in the furniture of the regency period remained chiefly confined to the Prince of Wales, later George IV, and his associates who were responsible for fostering its resurgence. The refinement and quality of the present cabinet suggests that it should be understood in the context of this circle of fashionable taste and patronage. The design of the cabinet is close to that of a low bookcase of circa 1808, illustrated in Clifford Musgrave’s Regency Furniture 1800-1830 (figure 1).

Franconian. Circa 1760. Of deal retaining its original polychrome painted decoration. The shaped cornice above the pylon shaped upper section with a glazed door opening to reveal an interior fitted with four shelves, the bow-fronted lower section with a conforming frieze fitted with a single drawer above a door centred by a cartouche filled with a bucolic rococo scene, the whole raised on three turned bun feet.

English. Circa 1785. This elegant cabinet, which retains its original painted decoration, is a rare survival of the Etruscan taste introduced into England in the late 1760s. The black and terracotta decoration to the ovals and the stylized frieze, set against a light-blue ground, are much in the manner of the Etruscan style of Robert Adam (1728-1792), the most celebrated architect and designer of the day. The present cabinet also draws on the conventional classical vocabulary, with a fan motif to the doors and sides and anthemion arcading to the frieze, but renders them in Etruscan colours. The ‘Etruscan Dressing Room’ was executed by Adam’s decorative artist Pietro Mario Borgnis (1743-1801). The decoration was first painted onto paper that was then pasted onto canvas which was attached to the walls of the room. Much the same technique is employed in the present cabinet, where the black and red Etruscan work is painted onto paper and then laid down onto the painted pale blue ground.

Italian. Circa 1950. Piero Fornasetti (1913-1988), one of Europe's most celebrated and innovative post-war decorative artists, produced only one design for corner furniture. Dating from the early 1950s, the present piece uses one of Fornasetti's favourite decorative motifs, the shell. He used trophies of shells, along with other natural forms, to decorate a myriad of objects from furniture and fabrics to glassware and ceramics. It is likely that the present piece was the product of Fornasetti's lengthy collaboration with the great Italian architect and designer Gio Ponti, which began in the late 1940s. Ponti had achieved fame as a furniture designer as early as the 1920s, and his strong appreciation of orament made Fornasetti his ideal partner. 'In our age of pronounced distrust of decoration, wrote Ponti in 1962, 'Fornasetti happily reveals its importance.'

English. Circa 1800. The early-nineteenth-century enthusiasm for Chinoiserie among fashionable aristocratic circles reached its apogee in the fantastical interiors of George IV’s opulent exotic palace, Brighton Pavilion. However, the more considered and studied chinoiserie of the present cabinet, dating from around 1800, presages this extravagant affair with the east and places the cabinet in a distinctly eighteenth-century tradition of design and decoration. The highly unusual painted decoration of the present cabinet, which has been remarkably well preserved, draws its inspiration from the rich decorative vocabulary of eighteenth-century chinoiserie, combining these elements in a unique and imaginative way. These decorative themes are accompanied by the subtle eighteenth-century form of the cabinet.

Vienna. Circa 1910. Of mahogany and cherrywood. The shaped top raised on two rows of spheres, the cupboard door with three pierced panels filled with interlinking circles, the door opening to reveal an interior fitted with shelves, the door flanked by the stepped angles.

Qianlong Period. Circa 1765. The present lacquer cabinets, raised on their original stands, are externally decorated with unusually bold figures in a landscape, and open to reveal further imagery with painted figures incorporated into an architectural balconied interior. While the doors of one cabinet unfold to portray a magical vision of the Orient, unlocking the secret panels of the other cabinet reveal intensely erotic scenes set within a beautiful garden. The exotic and highly unusual charm of these cabinets would have appealed to Charles Joseph, Prince de Ligne (1735-1814), since it was he who doubtless acquired them for the Chateau de Beloeil. Charles Joseph de Ligne was born in January 1735, heir to this princely family from Hainaut, a flat and fertile province forty miles southwest of Brussels. He was a close friend of the infamous Cassanova and was known to be a charmer of the age, seducing many, including Madame du Barry and Madame de Staël.

English. First Quarter Of The Nineteenth Century. The present cabinet is a superb example of the early 19th century taste in England for French-inspired furniture of the ancien régime. Led by George IV, the fashion quickly spread through the ranks of the British aristocracy and patrons from the very wealthy merchant class such as William Beckford and George Watson Taylor. Although the low-slung breakfront form of the piece is overtly English, all of the components that make up the cabinet are derived from the French vocabulary of ornament. There were a number of firms in London that specialized in French-inspired furniture, such as Robert Hume, Louis Le Gaigneur and Thomas Parker. Of those three firms, Parker would seem to be the most likely candidate for the cabinets' manufacture. Parker's name is synonymous with English boullework of the extremely high quality that is found on this cabinet.

English. Circa 1730. This magnificent and beautifully detailed bureau cabinet belongs to a group of closely related cabinets either labeled by or attributed to the celebrated London cabinetmaker Giles Grendey (1693-1780). Of rare viridian color, with its profuse colored opaque glazed highlights and exceptionally bold architectural form, it ranks among the finest works in lacquer by any maker of the first half of the 18th century. The designs and execution of Grendey's lacquerwork are very distinctive, often employing parades and close groupings of figures, animals and foliage, and using subtle layers of modeling in his raised work to achieve depth of perspective. The scene on the fall-front depicting a dignitary on horseback followed by attendants is a theme used by Grendey on a number of occasions. Furthermore the present bureau cabinet is almost identical in design to the walnut bureau cabinet of bombé form formerly in the Hochschild Collection and strongly associated with Grendey.