A Pair of George III Kingwood, Tulipwood, Indian Rosewood and Marquetry Side Cabinets in the manner of Christopher Fuhrlohg, Circa 1770

Possibly supplied to James Forbes, 16th Lord Forbes (1725-1804) of Craigievar for Putachie House (later renamed Castle Forbes), and by descent to

The Rt. Hon. The Lord Forbes, Castle Forbes;

Sotheby's London, 29 May 1964, lot 184;

Christie's London, 24 November 2005, lot 130.

L. Wood, Catalogue of Commodes, London, 1994, p.145, fig.143.

The commode as a type of furniture has always felt more continental in form than its more overtly English cousin, the chest of drawers. English commodes in the eighteenth century varied significantly in style and design, though, and there is one type that is often associated with the work of the Swedish émigré Christopher Fuhrlohg (1740–1792). Fuhrlohg, whose name is recorded under numerous variant spellings, created commodes in England that quoted the French Transitional style directly: standing on restrained cabriole legs, they tended to have a breakfront profile (‘à ressaut’ in French) and either doors covering drawers (‘à vantaux’) or two long continual drawers without divides (‘sans traverse’). French examples of this style of commode tended to be richly veneered, usually with geometric parquetry backgrounds centred by elaborate marquetry panels. The interesting element of the design of the present commodes is that they take the form of a Transitional commode à vantaux but with an ornamental style of marquetry that is more noticeably English and clearly conforms to the so-called ‘Adam style’ of delicate neoclassical tendrils, anthemia, lozenges and urns.

This pair of commodes was created as part of a set with a Pembroke table, on which the marquetry top and various motifs clearly match or rhyme with the commodes.¹ Fuhrlohg has left us numerous pieces of labelled furniture that have allowed furniture historians to identify his personal style: one of these, the example inscribed Christoph Fuhrlohg 1767 at Castle Howard, is clearly executed after a design by John Linnell in the V&A (E.292-1929). Other examples of his commodes in the Metropolitan Museum (66.64.2) and the Lady Lever collection² follow French styles more closely than the more English taste of the present lot, but there are still sufficient similarities that Lucy Wood includes the present Castle Forbes suite when she ventures a 'tentative attribution of this whole group to Fuhrlohg’s workshop'.³

The Castle Forbes Estate near Aberdeen has been in the possession of the Forbes Clan since the 15th century, and the present Lord Forbes is the 23^rd to hold the title, first created in the early 1440s. The castle as it currently stands was built during the Regency by the 17^th Lord Forbes and thus post-dates the present commodes. The 16^th Lord served as Deputy Governor of Fort William, but he was beset by financial difficulties and inherited debts that were not helped by the slow payments of his salary, and had to organise a large auction of his estates in 1770. This auction included the magnificent Druminnor Castle, which had been the principal seat of the Lords Forbes for over a half of a millennium;⁴ after the auction, the family moved permanently to the more modest Putachie House, which they renamed Castle Forbes and remain to this day.

¹ Sold from Castle Forbes by Lord Forbes at Sotheby’s London, 29 May 1964, lot 185.

² L. Wood, Catalogue of Commodes, London 1994, cat. 9, pp.106-114.

³ Ibid., p.145.

⁴ See ‘James, 16th Lord Forbes, and the Sale of Druminnor Castle’, Clan Forbes Society, 28 August 2021, available at: <https://www.clan-forbes.org/post/james-16th-lord-forbes> [accessed 13 August 2025] and ‘History of Druminnor’, drumminnor.co.uk, 2009, available at: <http://www.druminnor.co.uk/pages/history.php> [accessed 13 August 2025].