A QUEEN ANNE WALNUT AND SEAWEED MARQUETRY BUREAU EARLY 18TH CENTURY

A QUEEN ANNE WALNUT AND SEAWEED MARQUETRY BUREAUEARLY 18TH CENTURY With a moulded cornice above a pair of later glazed doors enclosing three adjustable shelves, the leather lined fall-flap enclosing a fitted interior with pigeonholes and small drawers and a well above two short and two graduated long drawers on later bun feet, the bureau made in two sections, restorations, drawer handles replaced, originally with mirrors 200cm high, 95cm wide, 59 cm deepProvenance: Almost certainly acquired from Mallett, 'November 1927, £520'A closely related bureau-cabinet with panels of seaweed marquetry is illustrated in Adam Bowett, English Furniture 1660 - 1714, From Charles II to Queen Anne, Woodbridge,2002, p. 221, pl. 7:51. Bowett notes the earliest clear reference to a `fully-formed desk-and -bookcase' was an entry in the Spectator, March 1711, advertising the stock in trade of the cabinet-maker Thomas Pistor. The `Cabbinet maker and Glasse seller' Gerrit Jensen (d.1715) who was particularly associated with so-called `seaweed' or `arabesque' marquetry, supplied several such cabinets for the Royal Household from 1710 onwards and John Gumley (d.1728), Jensen's successor as Royal Cabinet-Maker supplied another `Wallnuttee Desk & Bookcase with a glass door' for the Princess's Dressing Room at St James's palace in 1716 (ibid, p. 220)