Footnotes

• Provenance: purchased Lyegrove, Badminton, Avon, Christie's house sale, 26 September 1988 lot 133, formerly the property of Christopher Cowlin, Esq.
  
  Previously sold Christie's London, 11 April 1985, lot 123.
  
  The above bureau cabinet can be linked to a small group of rare 18th century Irish marquetry furniture illustrated in The Knight of Glin & J. Peill, Irish Furniture, pp.50-51. The group was initially identified by the furniture historian R.W.Symonds in 1956, it was his assumption that they did all in fact originate from Ireland as one of the walnut cabinets once belonged to Dean Swift, that example is now in the V & A Museum.
  
  A mahogany and marquetry secretaire from Florence Court, Co Fermanagh, circa 1730-40, (Ibid. plate 48) appears to have a very similar inlaid grotesque mask in the central cornice to the masks of the interior drawers. Several of the earlier walnut examples have the very distinctive Corinthian columns on the angles. The lion mask in the centre of the broken arch of this lot being totally typical of 18th century Irish carving.
  
  The same authors in The Magazine Antiques, October 2008, p.140-145 go further with their research as new information has come to light. It has been discovered that the walnut example of circa 1720, now in the Art Institute of Chicago (Ibid plate 45), has the signature of a little known German émigré, John Kirckoffer/Kirchoffer and dated 1732.
  
  A John Kirchoffer is listed in John Roger's Dictionary of Irish Furniture Maker's as an auctioneer, cabinetmaker and timber merchant in Dublin, in Marlborough Street between 1749 and 1776, and at 26 Denmark Street between 1781 and 1783. It seems likely that this Kirchoffer is the son of the John Kirchoffer who made the Chicago cabinet, who in turn was a descendant of the joiner Franz Ludwig Kirchoffer, who settled in Limerick and Kerry in 1709.
  
  Further Kirchoffers have been found including Francis Kirchoffer (1747-1827), the son of another John Kirchoffer (1711-1753). Francis was a cabinetmaker on Henry Street and Denmark Street and continued the unusually early practice of signing furniture (an example is in Duke University, Durham, North Carolina). A series of bills from Francis and John Kirchoffer have been found in the Public Records Office of Northern Ireland addressed to James Alexander (1730-1802), later first Earl of Caledon for Caledon, Co.Tyrone and for a house in Saint Stephen's Green, Dublin.

Category: Furniture / English Furniture and Works of Art