647 - A Cologne two-part cabinet

A Cologne two-part cabinet Partly dyed and sand-shaded fruitwoods and maple on softwood and oak. A deux corps: Two-door lower cabinet on inlaid frame supports. Recessed, likewise two-door upper section beneath a projecting cornice, supported at the front on tapering square-section columns. The lower door panels and the upper central panel with marquetry depicting large vases of flowers. The upper doors with depictions of illusionistic frames. The panel frames moulded; the vertical and horizontal divisions inlaid with strapwork. All four side panels with strapwork within outlined frames. Marquetry filled with wax in several places, sections of the lower door frames replaced, wrought-iron locks and brass fittings added later. Height 168, width 129, depth 59.5 cm. Around 1600 - 1610. The cabinet offered here is a typical example of the inlaid Cologne overmantel cabinet. A smaller, recessed upper section, with correspondingly smaller doors, sits on a usually two-door lower cabinet and is crowned by a projecting cornice supported at the corners. It served both for storage and for ostentation. Petra Werhahn-Fleischhauer suggests that the transition from inlaid to carved overmantel cabinets took place after 1610. The arabesques and strapwork ornaments are closely comparable to those on two pieces of furniture in the collection of the Museum für Angewandte Kunst Köln (MAKK). Their source was the "Schweyfbuch", published in Cologne in 1599 by the Cologne engraver Jakob Guckeisen and his colleague Johann Jakob Ebelmann. The overmantel cabinet presented here has very little sculptural decoration; its production can therefore with considerable certainty be dated to the period between 1600 and 1610. Literature Cf. the type: Colsman, Möbel, Gotik bis Jugendstil, Cologne 1999, cat. nos. 90 ff. Cf. Werhahn-Fleischhauer, Melchior von Rheidt und die Frage der Kölner Intarsienmöbel, in: Der Riss im Himmel, vol. I, Cologne 1999, pp. 255 ff., especially fig. 14, the example in the Musée de l'Œuvre Notre-Dame, Strasbourg. Cf. Colsman, Möbel. Gotik bis Jugendstil. Die Sammlung im Museum für Angewandte Kunst Köln, Cologne 1999, cat. nos. 90 ff.