A Late George III Satinwood, Sabicu and Kingwood Secretaire Bookcase attributed to George Simpson and made for Thomas Weeks, Circa 1805

Doyle New York, 17 May 2000, lot 422

1n 1797, inspired by the goldsmith James Cox's Spring Gardens Museum of automata, clocks and jewellery opened twenty-five years prior, the entrepreneur and 'perfumer and Machinist' Thomas Weeks decided to launch his own museum of automata and curiosities at 3-4 Titchborne Street off Piccadilly, designed by the architect James Wyatt. The collection included at least seventeen cabinets of similar or identical model to the present lot, fitted with clocks and barrel organs. Their manufacture is attributed to the London cabinetmaker George Simson (1757-1840) of St Paul's Churchyard, based on a similar cabinet bearing his label with comparable satinwood-bordered sabicu veneers (illustrated Christopher Gilbert, Pictorial Dictionary of Marked London Furniture, Leeds 1996, p. 422 fig. 840). 

The only known surviving cabinet of this model to still retain its original organ is at Raby Castle, County Durham, commissioned by Lady Catherine Margaret Powlett, 3rd Countess of Darlington in 1800 possibly after visiting the Weeks Museum. A Weeks Cabinet is in the collection of Temple Newsam House, Leeds (see Christopher Gilbert, Furniture at Temple Newsam House and Lotherton Hall, Leeds 1978, Vol. I no. 39 pp.55-58), and another from the Ashton-Smith collection is illustrated in Ralph Edwards, The Dictionary of English Furniture, Woodbridge 1954, Vol. I, p. 198 fig. 171. A further Weeks cabinet also from the Hyde Park Antiques collection was sold Sotheby’s New York, 31 January 2023, lot 59, and additional examples to appear on the market include Sotheby's New York, 19-20 April 2001, lot 545; Christie's London, 27 November 2003, lot 125, and Bonham's London, 3 June 2015, lot 181.