A carved ebony and ebonised cabinet on stand Franco-Flemish, part 17th century

of rectangular form, with a pair of cupboard doors carved with Italiante landscapes, opening to reveal a fitted interior, with two long frieze and five short drawers, on a later ebonised stand with twisted Salomonic supports, joined by a stretcher, on flattened bun feet

Highcleer Castle, Hampshire, the seats of the Earls of Carnarvon.

The Herbert Family acquired Highclere through descent. In 1692, Robert Sawyer, a lawyer and college friend of the diarist Samuel Pepys, bequeathed a stuccoed mansion at Highclere to his only daughter, Margaret. As Countess of Pembroke, Margaret lived at Wilton House in Wiltshire, which became the inheritance of her eldest son, Henry, after his father's death. It was her second son, Robert Herbert, who inherited Highclere and established a line of succession from father to son unbroken to the present day.   

Furniture of this sort, with its entire surface carved and incised in ebony became fashionable at the French court in the 1640's and is particularly associated with the reign of Anne of Austria (starting in 1643), and with the craftsman Jean Macé of Blois (born in 1602). It is generally thought that Flemish craftsmen, attracted by the higher salaries in Paris, went over to produce some of the finest examples of these type of cabinets. Jean Macé himself trained in Flanders, as is mentioned on 16 May 1644, when he was granted a royal warrant as `Menuisier Ebéniste' , `because of the long practice he had acquired in his art (of cabinet-making) he acquired in tle Low Countries...'

With the best quality ebony and superlative craftsmanship, these cabinets are amongst the most elegant furniture of the 17th century. Similar examples can be found in Alberto Cottino, Mobiliario do Seculo XVII, Novara, 1985, pp. 16-19 and Monique Riccardi-Cubitt, The Art of the Cabinet, London, 1992, p. 85.