Welsh boarded mural cupboard

Welsh oak boarded mural cupboard of arched bentwood form, the front formed from three narrow linear chip-carved boards, around a large central single-board door, the top board carved with three multiple concentric roundels or ‘draughts’, and incise-carved the initials ‘T E’, the door again centred by a matching ‘draught’, the side constructed from a single riven board secured with nails, single interior shelf.

Provenance: Purchased from Danny Robinson, Key Antiques, Chipping Norton, Oxfordshire, August 1994.

Literature: See Victor Chinnery, Oak Furniture: The British Tradition (2016), p. 284, fig. 3:292, for a comparable cupboard, formerly in the celebrated John Fardon Collection and sold Bonhams, New Bond Street, London, 15 March 2017, Lot 84 (£15,000). Two further bentwood cupboards are illustrated, ibid., p. 284, figs. 3:290 & 291. A fourth example, dated 1716, from Kennixton Farmhouse, LLangenydd, Gower, West Wales, displayed within a room setting at St. Fagans, National History Museum, Cardiff, is illustrated p. 344, fig. 3:449, and again in more detail by Richard Bebb, Welsh Furniture 1250 – 1950 (2007), Vol. I, p.18, pl.31. Victor Chinnery also notes a further example at a National Trust property, Cwmmau Farm, Brilley, Herefordshire.

Similar examples sold ‘Syd Levethan: The Longridge Collection’, Christie’s, King Street, London, 10-11 June 2010, Lot 1244 [£17,500]; and Bonhams, Oxford, 1 October 2014, Lot 631, [£12,500].