Box
Category
Objets de vertu
Date
1700 - 1799
Materials
Lacquer
Measurements
35 mm (Height) x 75 mm (Depth); 100 mm (Length)
Order this imageCollection
Charlecote Park, Warwickshire
NT 533588.2
Summary
Box (kobako or ‘small box’), lacquer, of irregular circumference (oval on one side), made in Japan, probably eighteenth century. It is decorated on the lid with a still-life of various objects, including purses and fans, and the sides with pine and prunus trees on a nashiji (pear skin) ground.
Full description
Small Japanese lacquer boxes (kobako or small box) were originally transported to Europe through private trade by Dutch East India Company servants in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries (i). Lacquerware was a highly sought after display item in Europe, particularly for French royalty and aristocrats (ii). The complex shape and decoration of this box, involving a degree of trompe l’oeil or illusionism, is similar to the shape and decoration of several Japanese lacquer boxes known to have been owned by Queen Marie-Antoinette of France (1755-93) (iii). This box is part of the collection once belonging to William Thomas Beckford (1760-1844). Beckford was a fourth-generation enslaver and an absentee plantation landlord. He had inherited fifteen plantations in 1770 and over 1,000 people were enslaved in his name (iv). He used the wealth from their labour to curate a collection and build Fonthill Abbey to house it. Beckford sold his estate and collection in 1822 (v). Originally intended to be sold at auction, this box was listed in the catalogue as Lot 85 ‘A very rare shaped gold Japan box, enriched with purses and other devices in gold relief. From the collection of the Duc de Bouillon’ (vi). However, the auction never went ahead, the collection and abbey was instead privately sold. In 1823, under new ownership, the contents of the Abbey were again put up for auction. This lacquer box was purchased by George Hammond Lucy (1789-1845) as Lot 1128 for £4.4s, along with several other lacquer pieces (vii). 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 (viii). It shares a similar history with NT 533588.1. (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) Kristina Kleutghen, ‘Imports and limitations: The Taste for Japanese Lacquer in Eighteenth-Century China and France’, Journal for Early Modern Cultural Studies, Spring 2017 vol.17, no.2, p. 176 (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, cats. 43 (Château de Versailles, MR 380.64), 52 (Château de Versailles, MR 380.12) and 53 (Château de Versailles, MR 380.38). (iv) 'William Thomas Beckford', Legacies of British Slave-Ownership database, UCL, 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) Christie, Manson and Wood. Magnificent Effects at Fonthill Abbey, Wilts. 1822, p.27; https://archive.org/details/frick-31072002719534/page/n71/mode/2up (accessed 1 May 2024) (vii) See Warwick Records Office L6/1116; Auction catalogue, 1823, NT 3045887. (viii) Mary Elizabeth Lucy, Biography of the Lucy Family at Charlecote Park in the County of Warwick, (London: privately printed by Emily Faithful & Co, 1862).