A 17th century Dutch-colonial ebony two-door VOC cabinet with silver mounts

H. 64.5 x W. 75 x D. 46 cm

The present cabinet features low-relief carving which relates to an ebony chair, reputedly brought to England by Catherine de Braganza as part of her dowry in 1662, now in the Ashmolean Museum. It also relates to a pair of chairs en suite with a settee, dated to 1640, on which George III and Queen Charlotte sat on their visit to Cotehele, Cornwall, in 1789 (Jaffer, 2001). Jan Veenendaal discusses this low-relief carving in ebony which he dates between 1650 and 1680 coming from the Coromandel Coast of India. His illustrations of the low-relief carvings in a number of chairs share much with the carvings of the cabinet present.

Cabinets from Coromandel Coast usually don’t have mounts, whereas those from Batavia (Jakarta) do. During the restoration of this cabinet we found the oxidation of silver in the wood. It is therefore safely to assume that the cabinet was adorned with silver mounts in the more mundane city of Batavia. Its owner – likely a high ranking VOC official – was probably restationed and sent to Batavia, which was not uncommon.

Sources:
Amin Jaffer, Furniture from British India and Ceylon, London, 2001, p. 133
Jan Veenendaal, Furniture from Indonesia, Sri Lanka and India during the Dutch period, Delft 1985, p. 21-29