This corner cupboard is an early example of stoved japanning on furniture.

Henry Clay was the most celebrated practitioner of stoved japanning and patented the technique of making stoved papier mache as used on this piece. This piece was purchased by the V&A using funds from the Brigadier Clark Fund. Many magnificent pieces of furniture were presented by the late Brigadier W.E. Clark CMG, DSO, to the V&A through the Art Fund in his lifetime. After his death, a trust was set up in 1976 so that his estate could be used by the V&A to add to its collection of English seventeenth and eighteenth-century furniture and cIocks. Brigadier Clark wished this bequest to be through the Art Fund, though the fund is administered by the V&A.

Provenance

?Commissioned by Sir Nathaniel Acton; Shrubland Park, Suffolk, by 1920s; Sotheby's, 2006; private collection; through Robert Holden.


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