Estimate

35.000 - 50.000

Session 3

28 May 2024

Hammer Price

Description

Constructed with four drawers simulating six and a compartment at the upper section featuring a tilt top
Teak, ebony, Indian rosewood, ivory, bone and iron
With gilt copper fittings
India, probably Thane, ca. 1560-1620

78x83x44 cm

Category

Furniture

This rare and important chest, on a stand in the shape of elephants, belongs to a small group of objects of this type and to a similarly rare production with specific formal and decorative features, which are now better understood. Made from teak (Tectona grandis), the chest is veneered in Indian rosewood (Dalbergia latifolia) and decorated with inlays of elephant ivory, animal bone dyed green, ebony (Dyospiros ebenum), and exotic woods, all pinned with small brass pins, resulting in a sumptuous work of marquetry. Rectangular in shape, it has top lid that, when opened, reveals a large interior compartment. The chest has four drawers mimicking six arranged in three rows to maintain symmetry; the two at the top correspond to the interior of the chest. Our chest, similar to a cabinet’s top section or box, stands on two finely carved elephants in ebonized wood, probably of later manufacture. As with similarly decorated cabinets (see Crespo 2021, pp. 99-100, and p. 151, cat. 36) which probably lost their original stand, this chest may have been fitted with a likewise inlaid stand, either fitted with drawers or set with hollow arched compartments like a buffet or cupboard, or even a less decorated stand, and therefore less likely to survive. The intense wear on the underside of the present chest strongly suggests this possibility. The gilt copper fittings, some of which may have been manufactured later, include two side handles for greater ease of transport, six pierced, openwork lock plates, and the plentiful hemispherical head nails that decorate all the edges of the chest and the spaces between the drawers.
The copious inlaid decoration includes vases of flowers symmetrically arranged on the fronts of the drawers. More complex and carpet-like, the decoration on the sides features identical flower vases in the central field, a narrow border of quatrefoils and ‘tilde’-shaped elements, and a wide border of vegetal scrolls with dragon head terminals, large rosettes at the midpoints and crowned two-headed eagles set on the corners. The decoration of the top, also carpet-like, follows the same decoration of flower vases in the central field flanking a large circular medallion, of which the centre is reminiscent of stylised lotus flowers, bordered by a frieze of floral sprays with dragon head terminals. Similarly, narrow borders decorate the top, as well as the wide border of scrolls with dragon heads, rosettes and double-headed eagles. The back of the chest, similarly veneered in rosewood, has simple ivory fillets and a narrow border alternating quatrefoils and 'tilde'-shaped elements. Sixteenth-century Portuguese records mention the village of Taná, or Thane, today part of the city of Mumbai (Bombay), in which a large community of Muslim craftsmen flourished, as the origin for precious marquetry furniture. It is highly probable that the centre of production of this chest is Thane, then part of the Northern Province of the Portuguese State of India. The present chest thus belongs to an exceptional group of rare, early furniture made for the Portuguese market, which was only recently identified in regard to its geographical origin, decorative sources of inspiration (Iranian, Ottoman, and European), and historical context of production (see Crespo 2016, pp. 136-171, cat. 15; Crespo, 2021, pp. 88-104; and Crespo 2024).
We only know of two other chests of this production and characteristics. One belongs to the Museo Colonial e Histórico de Luján in Argentina and was published in 1944 by A. Taullard in his classic book, El Mueble Colonial Sudamericano, under no. 204. More famous is the chest formerly in the collection of the 2nd Earl of Foz (later 1st Marquis of Foz), Tristão Guedes Correia de Queirós (1849-1917), which may be identified in one of the photographs of the well-known Álbum do Palácio Foz of 1891. Attributed to M. Caetano de Portugal, and belonging today to the Art Library of the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, of the twenty-nine photographs, one records the interior of the 'Waiting Room' (inv. CFT172.011). On the right, we see a large inlaid chest elevated on two elephants, flanked by a pair of Goan-made cabinets. Years later, on May 3, 1901, in the public sale catalogue of the entire contents of Palácio Foz, the chest is recorded in Room G under no. 329, and described as follows: 'An ebony chest inlaid with ivory of different colours, with two elephants in ebony with horse trappings also inlaid in ivory. The interior of this precious piece of furniture is also inlaid, in ivory, more simply. Work of 16th-century India.’ (Catálogo 1901, p. 27). Large (106.0 x 108.0 x 62.0 cm), this chest was auctioned by Sotheby’s (London, October 6, 2010, lot 223). Although its illustrious provenance was not properly noted by the auction house, it sold for 241,250 pounds. Made from teak, it is similarly veneered in rosewood and decorated with coloured inlays. It is fitted with similarly-shaped pierced openwork brass fittings, with the edges and spaces between the drawers decorated with ivory button-shaped nails, probably of later manufacture and nineteenth-century in taste. The elephants, unlike its nineteenth-century description, are not in ebony but in ebonised carved teak. The inlaid decoration of the Marquises of Foz’ chest is similar in every way to that of our chest, featuring crowned double-headed eagles, flower vases, and vegetal scrolls with dragon heads. However, its overall decoration is less reminiscent of a cabinet’s top section, unlike our chest.
Smaller in size (24.8 x 49.9 x 30 cm), mention should be made of a chest from this production fitted with two drawers on the lower register and resting on gilt copper spherical feet, in a private collection and formerly belonging to the senhores of Óis do Bairro, in Paço de Óis or Casa de Montalvão, Anadia (Dias 2013, pp. 376, 378-380). This production of coloured marquetry furniture seems to have been highly appreciated by Portuguese elites in the nineteenth century, judging from examples that belonged to the royal house (Crespo 2021, pp. 90-92, and fig. 50) and to collectors such as Júlio Eugénio Ferreira Ozório (Crespo 2021, pp. 93-94, and p. 152, cat. 45) or Vasco Ortigão Sampaio (Crespo 2024, pp. 17-22). This taste has also resulted in pieces of furniture that integrate original elements, combining them with others of more recent manufacture, making it difficult in certain cases to completely separate them. This is the case with a cabinet on stand in the Museu da Sociedade de Geografia de Lisboa, gifted in 1969 by Ruben Henry Harvey, or the so-called ‘Leyland cabinet’, sold at auction by Christie's (London, July 6, 2017, lot 18) and photographed in 1892 in the collection of Frederick Richards Leyland. Both combine original elements from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries with others made in the nineteenth century. Other pieces, more unrealistic, are complete nineteenth- and twentieth-century fabrications.
The present chest, which was once in an important manor house in the north of Portugal, features all the technical characteristics consistent with a date between the second half of the sixteenth and the first decades of the seventeenth century, both in terms of the methods of preparing the wooden planks and the typical dovetail joinery used, reinforced with bamboo dowels, or even the complex inlay technique (Crespo 2024, pp. 13-14). Of particular note is the extraordinary size of the solid teak planks that make up the top of the chest, or the size and quality of the rosewood veneer on the back, and the refinement of the rosewood dowels that pin it to the teak carcass. This thick rosewood veneer, unlike those on the other sides of the chest, retains its original colour similar to Brazilian rosewood (Dalbergia nigra). The quality and richness of the inlaid decoration are only mirrored by the exoticism of the elephants, resulting in an unusual piece of furniture of great effect and magnificence.

Hugo Miguel Crespo
Centre for History, University of Lisbon