Cabinet
Category
Furniture
Date
c. 1640 - c. 1690
Materials
Cabinet: lacquered camphor wood, brass, iron; stand: mahogany with deal construction.
Measurements
127 x 93 x 49.5 cm; 78 cm (Height); 49 cm (Height); 93.5 cm (Width); 50.5 cm (Depth)
Place of origin
Japan
Order this imageCollection
Felbrigg, Norfolk
NT 1398387
Summary
A lacquered camphorwood cabinet on mahogany stand, the cabinet Japanese, c. 1640-90, the stand English, c. 1760. The cabinet with a pair of hinged cupboard doors decorated with egrets resting around an old willow tree in silver and gold against a background of transparent lacquer showing the grain of the wood, enclosing an arrangement of ten drawers, two with locks, covered with transparent lacquer again showing the grain. The cabinet with chased gilt brass hinges, corner brackets and lock plates and with iron carrying handles to the sides. The stand with square section legs and corner brackets or spandrels.
Full description
It is relatively unusual to see the wood grain left visible on Japanese export lacquer cabinets. A very similar scene of egrets around an old willow can be seen on a seventeenth-century Kanō School screen painting in the Senior Councillor’s Room (Rōjū-no-Ma) of Nijō Castle, Kyoto. References: Oliver Impey and Christiaan Jörg, Japanese Export Lacquer, 1580-1850, Amsterdam, Hotei Publishing, 2005, p. 136, pl. 276 (a cabinet with similar transparent lacquer, at Drayton House, Northamptonshire). See also Emile de Bruijn, Borrowed Landscapes: China and Japan in the Historic Houses and Gardens of Britain and Ireland, London, Philip Wilson Publishers in association with the National Trust, 2023, pp. 33-4 (fig. 13), and see further references listed there. (James Weedon, 2017, and Emile de Bruijn, 2024)
Provenance
Possibly originally acquired by William Windham I (1647-89) and Katherine Windham, née Ashe (1652-1729), who built the west front of Felbrigg in the 1680s; bequeathed to the National Trust with the rest of the collection and the house by Robert Wyndham Ketton-Cremer (1906-1969).
References
Japanese Export Lacquer, Pg. 136 Pl. 276