An Elizabeth I/James I joined oak three-tier buffet or court cup-board, probably London, circa 1600-10


Having a shallow box upper tier enclosed by an associated hinged lid divided into two, with the remains of one original hinge to the rear of the well, with reeded and fluted top and middle rails, the lower two tiers with single-boards, raised on deeply reeded bulbous cup-and-cover front supports, with Ionic and Corinthian capitals, the back uprights stop-fluted, 130cm wide x 46cm deep x 106cm high, (51in wide x 18in deep x 41 1/2in high)
|Provenance:Eric Moller, Thorncombe Park, Surrey (see also Lot 218 from the same collection)Sold Sotheby's, 'The Moller Collection', London, 18 September 1993, Lot 25Sold Christie's, 12 July 2005, Lot 416Literature:Illustrated R. W. Symonds, Furniture Making in Seventeenth and Eighteenth Century England (1955), p. 14, pl. 27 & 28. The author notes on p. 22 that this ' cupboard is of high quality and was probably made in London'. R. W. Symonds, 'Plate, Court and Livery Cupboards', Country Life, Vol. CII, 26th December 1947, p. 1309, fig. 6 and R. W. Symonds, 'The Renaming of Old English Furniture', The Antique Collector, August 1948, p. 127, fig. 2.A related three-tier buffet in walnut is illustrated Percy Macquoid, A Record of the Collections in the Lady Lever Art Gallery, Port Sunlight, Cheshire, Formed by The First Viscount Leverhulme (1928), Vol. III, p. 30, pl. 8.