Box
Category
Wooden objects
Date
Unknown
Materials
Wood and lacquer
Measurements
146 x 203 x 150 mm
Order this imageCollection
Charlecote Park, Warwickshire
NT 533013.2
Summary
One of a pair of tiered lacquer boxes, Japanese, late seventeenth or eighteenth century. The tiered sections and lid, decorated with landscapes in hiramaki-e (low relief pictorial lacquer), sit in a cabriole-legged stand with raised corners, decorated with phoenixes and flowers in gold on a hirameji (gold flakes scattered in black lacquer) ground.
Full description
Small tiered Japanese lacquer boxes (jūbako) were often transported to Europe through private trade by servants of the Dutch East India Company (i). These particular objects were said to be from the collection of Hortense Mancini, Duchesse de Mazarin (1646–99), who is known to have collected lacquer (ii). The combination of tiered boxes with cabriole-legged stands, as seen here, is also similar to the make-up of a Japanese lacquer box known to have been owned by Queen Marie-Antoinette of France (1755-93) (iii). The boxes were later acquired, along with other lacquer objects with an alleged Mazarin provenance, by William Thomas Beckford (1760-1844). Beckford was a fourth-generation enslaver and absentee plantation landlord. He had inherited fifteen plantations in 1770 and over 1,000 people were enslaved his name (iv). He used the wealth from their labour to curate a collection and build Fonthill Abbey to house it (v). With the decline in sugar profits and lawsuits Beckford was forced to sell his estate and collection in 1822 (vi). In 1823, under new ownership, the contents of the Abbey were again put up for auction. This box was purchased by George Hammond Lucy (1789-1845) as lot 547 for £9.10s.6, along with its companion, lot 548 (viii). It is likely one of the lacquerware pieces described by Mary Elizabeth Lucy (1803-1890) as ‘on the lacquer table in the billiard room’ in 1862 (ix). (i) Oliver Impey and John Whitehead, ‘Japanese Lacquer’ in Derek E. Ostergard, William Beckford 1760-1844: An Eye for the Magnificent, (New Haven and London, Yale University Press, 2001), pp. 218-219 (ii) Christie, Manson and Wood, Magnificent Effects at Fonthill Abbey, Wilts., 1822, p.30 (iii) See Monika Kopplin (ed.), Japanische Lacke: Die Sammlung der Königin Marie-Antoinette [Japanese Lacquer: The Collection of Queen Marie-Antoinette], Munich, Hirmer Verlag, in association with Museum für Lackkunst, Münster, 2002, cat. 24 (Château de Versailles, MR 380.89). (iv) 'William Thomas Beckford', Legacies of British Slave-Ownership database, accessed 30/05/2024. https://www.ucl.ac.uk/lbs/person/view/22232 (v) See Boyd Alexander, (trans. and ed.), Life at Fonthill 1807-1822 With Interludes in Paris and London. From the Correspondence of William Beckford (London: Rupert Hart-Davis, 1957); England’s Wealthiest Son: A Study of William Beckford (London: Centaur Press Lt., 1962); Amy Frost, ‘The Beckford Era’ in Caroline Dakers (ed.), Fonthill Recovered: A Cultural History (London: UCL Press, 2018), pp. 59-93. (vi) Caroline Dakers, ‘The break-up of the Fonthill estate’ in Dakers (ed.), Fonthill Recovered: A Cultural History (London: UCL Press, 2018), pp. 97-98. (viii) Warwickshire County Record Office, L6/1116 (ix) Mary Elizabeth Lucy, Biography of the Lucy Family at Charlecote Park in the County of Warwick, (London: privately printed by Emily Faithful & Co, 1862), p.131.
Provenance
Purchased by George Hammond Lucy (1789-1845) for Charlecote Park, Warwickshire, at the 1823 Fonthill Abbey sale, lot 548 for £9.10.6, alongside its companion, lot 547.