Cheffins
Lot 708
A carved mahogany bombe linen press to a design by Thomas Chippendale, circa 1900, with stepped top with canted sides and applied stiff leaf and floral carved mouldings, slides to the interior, the base of bombé form, set to the top with two short and one long drawer cast brass swan neck handles, the base centred below with stylized foliate motif, to the canted front corners richly carved with rocaille and acanthus leaf carving, leading to similarly shaped bracket feet to each side.172½ x 145 x 66cm (67 x 57 x 26in). Literature: Footnotes:The Gentleman and Cabinet-Maker’s Director, Plate CXXXI. Ralph Edwards, The Dictionary of English Furniture, Volume II (1990 edition), p. 74. H.H. Mulliner The Decorative Arts in England (1923), Fig. 14. Geoffrey Beard and Christopher Gilbert (eds.), Dictionary of English Furniture Makers 1660-1840 (1986), p. 164 This unusual cabinet conforms almost exactly to an ambitious rococo design in Thomas Chippendale's celebrated publication, The Gentleman and Cabinet-Maker's Director of 1754 (figure 1). The Director is composed of a large collection of, as Chippendale said, "the most elegant and useful designs of household furniture in the Gothic, Chinese and Modern taste." The modern taste refers to the anglicised version of the forms and styles of France which strongly influenced Chippendale's work at this date and has been called "for the most part an Anglicisation of the rocaille". This taste is revealed in the design of Lot 708, with the swelling bombe form of the base and the exceptional fine quality of the intricately designed carving to the feet, an interpretation in wood of the fine chased gilt bronze work of French metal-workers. The Director represented an unparalleled undertaking in the publication of furniture designs, with the first and second editions constituting 160 plates of superb engravings. The work exerted a powerful influence on contemporary style that was felt as far afield as the Prussian Court and Lisbon and which established Chippendale as an inspired and innovative designer. A third edition, somewhat expanded, was to follow in a series of weekly publications in 1762. In the year of publication of the first edition, in which the design related to the present cabinet appears, Chippendale moved to spacious premises in St. Martin's Lane and began to provide furniture to a range of fashionable clients and nobility, including the Dukes of Beaufort, Portland, Norfolk and Hamilton, and the Earls of Northumberland and Chesterfield. Evidence of repairs around the hinges, otherwise in very untouched condition
