Cabinetwork
4 objects
Veneered case furniture, most of it built around something that moves: a sliding top, a rising stand, a drawer released by a catch. The marquetry is the part that survives photography; the mechanism is the reason the piece exists.
The plates in this section flatter the wrong half of each object. A veneered case is two things: an oak carcass that does the work, and a few tenths of a millimetre of something rarer laid over it, cut as a puzzle and read as a picture. The camera takes the picture and stops there.
The point is underneath. A table whose top slides back, a stand that rises on a rack, a coffer that opens only after a catch releases it: the mechanism is joinery, made by the same hand and to the same tolerance as the drawer it hides in. It is also the part a plate cannot show, so the entries that have one carry a further view with the movement open.
Catalogued by maker where the record names one, and by the mechanism where it does not.
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Oak veneered with tulipwood and amaranth, seventeen porcelain plaques · ca. 1768 · 04-01
Oak veneered with tulipwood and amaranth, thirteen porcelain plaques · ca. 1770 · 04-02
Oak veneered with marquetry, gilt-bronze mounts · 1778 · 04-03
Oak veneered with mahogany and marquetry, gilt-bronze mounts · 1781 · 49.7.117