Cabinet on Stand
.1 (upper): 61 5/8 × 39 1/8 × 21 1/8 inches (156.53 × 99.38 × 53.66 cm)
.2 (lower): 33 1/4 × 44 1/2 × 22 7/8 inches (84.46 × 113.03 × 58.1 cm)
- 122
If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, this English cabinet is a love letter to East Asian lacquered furniture. In the early 1700s, imported East Asian objects were popular and expensive in England. In response, English cabinetmakers developed a technique they inaccurately call japanning, mixing a type of varnish with pigments to imitate true Asian lacquer, hardened tree sap that protects and decorates furniture. Decorated with motifs borrowed from Chinese and Japanese furniture and porcelain, objects like this cabinet offered eager European customers the ability to have fashionable furniture at a more affordable—bur still very elite—price point.
(Image of cabinet interior)
With Kent Galleries, Ltd., London, by August 11, 1930;
Purchased from Kent Galleries, Ltd. by French & Co., New York, stock no. 37047, August 11, 1930-January 30, 1933 [1];
Purchased from French & Co. by The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, 1933.
NOTES:
[1] Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles, French & Co. Stock Sheets, box 42, folder 2, copy in Nelson-Atkins curatorial file.
“American Art Notes,” The Connoisseur, Vol. XCII No. 388 (Dec. 1933), 420 (repro.)
Cescinsky, Herbert. English Furniture from Gothic to Sheraton: A Concise Account of the Development of English Furniture and Woodwork from the Gothic of the Fifteenth Century to the Classic Revival of the Early Nineteenth (New York: Garden City Publishing, 1937), 219-220.
Cescinsky, Herbert. English Furniture from Gothic to Sheraton: A Concise Account of the Development of English Furniture and Woodwork from the Gothic of the Fifteenth Century to the Classic Revival of the Early Nineteenth (New York: Dover Publications, 1968), 219-220.
Hinckley, F. Lewis. A Directory of Queen Anne, Early Georgian, and Chippendale Furniture: Establishing the Preeminence of the Dublin Craftsmen.(New York: Crown, 1971), 158 (repro.).
Ross E. Taggart and George L. McKenna, eds., Handbook of the Collections in The William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, Kansas City, Missouri, vol. 1, Art of the Occident, 5th ed. (Kansas City, MO: William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, 1973), 221 (repro.).
Ross Taggert, “The Charm of Chinoiserie,” Apollo 96, no. 130 (December 1972): 56-60 [repr. in Denys Sutton, ed., William Rockhill Nelson Gallery, Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, Kansas City (London: Apollo Magazine, 1972), 7 (repro.).
Roger Ward and Patricia J. Fidler, eds., The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art: A Handbook of the Collection (New York: Hudson Hills Press, in association with Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 1993), 181 (repro.).
