Peter J. Martin and Son Antiques

Description

A superb quality music cabinet veneered in thuya wood with ebonized mouldings. The cabinet features a slim frieze drawer with fine hand-cut dovetail joints and central brass patera to the front, above a glazed upper door opening to reveal and arrangement of three shelves and flanked by turned and fluted ebonized columns with parcel gilt decoration, above a single blind door with four brass floral paterae and central polychrome painted panel of musical instruments and garlands, and raised on a shaped plinth base with original castors below.
Bears makers’ stamp to drawer, ‘Gillow & Co. 6403’.

Width 22 ½” (57cm) Depth 15 ½” (39cm) Height 40 ½” (103cm)

About Gillows
Gillows – based in Lancaster in North West England – is rightly renowned as one of the greatest of English furniture makers. Uniquely for a provincial firm, it had showrooms and workshops in London. Its 18th and early 19th century furniture was known for a simplicity and concentration of line, and for clever use of convex and concave surfaces and planes. Their business connections with the West Indies allowed them access to the finest of exotic timbers.

Robert Gillow began making furniture around 1730 (succeeded by sons Richard and Robert, and later grandson Thomas), and developed first a national and then an international reputation as a supplier of quality furniture to the upper middle classes, the landed gentry, and the aristocracy. The company won commissions to furnish and decorate public buildings in Australia, South Africa, India, Russia, Germany, France and the U.S., and it also executed Pugin’s designs for London’s Palace of Westminster from 1840.

Gillows was one of the first companies to mark its furniture with a stamp or label, and it is possible to date much of its output according to the wording of these markings. It is generally held that these markings were for ‘stock’ items only, though it is estimated that up to 60% of their output was for private commissions and therefore not marked. It is sometimes possible, however, to attribute such furniture to Gillows by provenance, design, and quality.

Condition and Details of Restoration
This item is in original structural condition and is completely sound. The polish has been re-finished, by our own craftsmen, by hand in the traditional manner. There are minor old marks under the polish in our opinion the photographs are representative.