Overview
We don’t know exactly what this cabinet was used for. It was probably intended for a living or dining room, and, as the drawers are quite small, it must have been designed to contain objects like table implements, knick-knacks, or jewellery. What we are more certain about is the era in which the cabinet was made. We can tell this from its design, which is in the William and Mary style, named after the king and queen of the time.
The cabinet is coated in black lacquer, using a technique known as japanning. This method, invented by enterprising Europeans, was a cheap way of imitating expensive oriental lacquer.
Over the lacquer are painted gold decorations of trees, deer, and people. These pictures are chinoiserie – meaning a European adaptation of Chinese designs. (All things Oriental were popular during the late 1600s.)
The doors are framed with mother-of-pearl, and inlaid with large diamond-shaped and triangle-shaped pieces of shagreen, or shark-skin. The hinges and corners of the doors are brass. This is not only decorative, but practical, because it protects the fragile, vulnerable edges from wear and tear.
The stand of the cabinet has a deep apron decorated with a repeating leaf pattern, and the four legs are cabriole. A cabriole leg is one which is curved to resemble the front leg of a leaping animal. The word ‘cabriole’ comes from the French for jumping in the air. This stand’s legs are also perforated in oriental style, and they stand on paw feet.
Opening the cabinet doors reveals four small drawers and three large ones, all with brass handles, and decorated in the same gold on black as the cabinet front. There are also stripes and a repeating leaf pattern in green and white. That ornamentation is believed to have been added some time after the original lacquering. A couple of centuries ago, furniture painting was a fashionable hobby among well-to-do Englishwomen, and it was probably one of these enthusiasts who thought the cabinet needed a little bit extra! The insides of the doors are decorated in a similar way, but with more free-form flowers. And the interiors of the drawers are painted scarlet.
This cabinet was just one of the valuable antiques kept by wealthy collector Ella Elgar at her Wairarapa mansion Fernside. When she died, she bequeathed this and many other treasures to the Dominion Museum, one of Te Papa’s predecessors. Until 1992 these were displayed in period rooms at the Museum and today can be seen in current Te Papa exhibitions.
Text originally published in Tai Awatea, Te Papa's onfloor multimedia database (1998).