Bureau bookcase
W. Charles Tozer (fl. 1910-1960)
Category
Furniture
Date
circa 1920
Materials
Softwood, plywood, paint, gilding, brass
Measurements
185.4 x 76.5 x 48.3 cm
Place of origin
England
Order this imageCollection
Shaw's Corner, Hertfordshire
NT 1274804
Summary
A japanned bureau bookcase, English, circa 1920, in early 18th century style, bearing a retail label for W. Charles Tozer of Brook Street, London. Having a moulded cornice above a pair of panelled doors applied with arched panel mouldings and enclosing an interior fitted with three adjustable shelves. The lower section a bureau fitted with a hinged fall enclosing arch-headed pigeonholes above two drawers, either side of a central small cupboard door, with four graduated long drawers below. All raised on bracket feet. All-over japanned in gold, silver, black, green and red against a blue-green ground.
Full description
Bernard (1856-1950) and Charlotte Shaw (1857-1943) purchased several items of furniture from the prestigious dealer W. Charles Tozer of Brook St., Mayfair in the 1930s. Four of the pieces (this bureau bookcase; NT 1274782, an escritoire; and two small gateleg tables (NT 1274797.1 and .2, not labelled by Tozer but possibly purchased from him) - were imitations of English furniture of the late 17th and early 18th centuries, whilst three chairs (NT 1274790.1 & .2 and NT 1274795) were copies of styles popular at the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries. Reproduction furniture soared in popularity in the opening decades of the 20th century in response to the revival in the market for authentic 17th and 18th century furniture, which was relatively scarce, very expensive and, as a result, a luxury beyond the means of most people. W. Charles Tozer was a leading retailer (he is known to have been supplied with stock by other cabinet-makers) of this type of revival furniture, particularly walnut-veneered furniture: it is possible that a walnut stool (NT 1274796) in the collection at Shaw's Corner was also purchased from Tozer in the 1920s or 30s. The late 17th and early 18th century japanned furniture which Tozer copied had been the product of a similar economic phenomenon: domestic production stimulated by the fashion for luxury imported Asian lacquered goods in the last half of the 17th, and the early 18th, century. Authentic Asian lacquer of the 17th and 18th centuries was almost always black, and japanning (the European imitation of Asian lacquer) in Europe originally followed suit when the domestic market for copies first emerged. However, by the early 18th century, European japanners – like the English cabinet-maker John Belchier (fl. 1717-53) – were producing furniture in European forms decorated in vibrant red, blue, ivory and green. This type of early 20th century japanned furniture was, therefore, a copy of a copy, or the English interpretation of East Asian lacquer and may, in fact, have been purchased by Shaw to help create a quintessentially English, rather than East Asian, interior. The Shaws selected their furniture on philosophic, as well as aesthetic, grounds. Bernard Shaw favoured good quality furniture sold at reasonable prices, and has been described as 'fascinated by the phenomenon of the fake in furniture, which exposes the commodity fetish - the undermining of the original that is characterised by the reproduction...’ For Shaw, the ‘connoisseur’s’ claim that he or she valued art for art’s sake alone, ‘denying a monetary concern’, was exposed by their tendency to dismiss well-made copies, to which – being to all intents-and-purposes exact replicas – there could be no objection on artistic grounds.[1] Shaw encountered this attitude in 1944, when James Lee-Milne (1908-1997) – assessing the contents of Shaw's Corner on behalf of the National Trust – described this bureau bookcase as a 'fake lacquer bureau', whilst praising what he considered an authentic early 18th century bureau (still in the collection, either NT 1274791 or NT 1274810) as ‘rather good’.[2] Shaw, however, was proud of his furniture, and he himself described it as fake. In 1949, protesting at the small sums fetched by his furniture at auction, he wrote 'my splendid Hepplewhites (first class fakes), fit for Windsor or Chatsworth...fetched shillings.'[3] [1] Alice McEwan, 'Commodities, Consumption, and Connoisseurship: Shaw's Critique of Authenticity in Modernity', in Shaw, Vol. 35, No. 1, Special Issue: Shaw and Modernity (2015), 46-85, 69-70.[2] James Lee-Milne, Diaries, 1942-54, pp. 134-5, 9 February 1944.[3] McEwan, 70
Provenance
The Shaw Collection. The house and contents were bequeathed to the National Trust by George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950) in 1950, together with Shaw's photographic archive.
Marks and inscriptions
Ivorine label on the inside of one of the uppermost drawers: W. Charles Tozer, 25 Brook Street, London W1
Makers and roles
W. Charles Tozer (fl. 1910-1960), designer W. Charles Tozer (fl. 1910-1960), maker W. Charles Tozer (fl. 1910-1960), retailer