Footnotes

This unusual form of secretaire cabinet is of a type associated with the 'perfumer' and 'Machinist' Thomas Weeks and his celebrated Museum of Mechanical Curiosities which he founded in c.1797. In leasing the properties at 3 and 4 Titchborne Street, located not far from Haymarket and behind modern-day Piccadilly Circus, Thomas Weeks established his museum at this address. It quickly became an amusing and entertaining site for fashionable and sophisticated Londoners to visit throughout the Regency period and early 19th century.

However, this ingenious development served as more than solely a museum. It was simultaneously also an exhibition space, a collection housed within a private property and even a shop. Therein, an impressive variety of expensive mechanical toys and rare contrivances or contraptions were displayed; everything ranging from self-playing organs to mechanical spiders. Weeks appears to have taken his inspiration for this concept from a similar museum developed approximately twenty years before his own. This forerunner was founded by the goldsmith and inventor James Cox and came to be known as James Cox's Spring Gardens Museum of Automata, Clocks and Jewellery.

In an 1802 publication entitled "Picture of London" a fascinating and detailed description of the Weeks main gallery, prior to its official opening, features therein: 'The grand room which is 107 feet long, and 30 feet high, is covered entirely with blue satin, and contains a variety of figures, which exhibit the effects of mechanism in an astonishing manner. The architecture is by Wyatt; the painting on the ceiling is by Rebecca and Singleton.'

Among the assorted objects on display were: 'two temples... nearly seven feet high, supported by sixteen elephants, embellished with seventeen hundred pieces of jewellery', in addition to mechanical models of a bird of paradise and, somewhat unnervingly, a tarantula.

Following the death of Thomas Weeks in 1834, the contents of the shop within the Museum were auctioned off. This sale included several comparable cabinets to the present lot, many of which today incorporate clocks, but which would have each originally housed an automatic barrel organ either in place of, or acting in tandem with, these clocks. However, the only documented example still retaining its barrel organ is in the collection of Lord Barnard at Raby Castle, County Durham, and was commissioned in 1800 by Lady Catherine Margaret Powlett, 3rd Countess of Darlington. It is illustrated in a Christopher Gilbert article for the "Connoisseur" Magazine, which was published in 1971.

It is believed that in total at least seventeen such cabinets, incorporating these barrel organs, evidently at one time or another formed part of the famous Weeks collection. The apparent origin of their shared overall appearance is a design illustrated in Sheraton's Cabinet-Maker and Upholsterer's Drawing Book, first published in 1791, pl. 48. Whilst it is also thought that they were intended to echo the façade of Wyatt's Museum building itself, or were at least largely inspired by its overall outline.

The identification of a 'lady's secretary and cabinet' veneered with the same timbers, satinwood and sabicu, as the previous, and which is dated c.1795 (formerly with Jeremy Ltd.), closely relates to this group of Weeks cabinets. It is of particular interest since it bears the maker's label for George Simson (act.1780-1839). This version features in C. Gilbert, Marked London Furniture, 1700-1840, pl. 840, p. 422. Simson is recorded as having been active at 19 St. Paul's Church Yard as a cabinet maker from 1780 until his death in 1839, whilst importantly in 1793 he is also documented as a subscriber to Sheraton's "Drawing Book". Also of significance is the fact that in 1803 Simson was included in the list of master cabinet makers in the "Cabinet Dictionary". For more information on Simson, see G. Beard & C. Gilbert, Dictionary of English Cabinet Makers, 1660-1840, p. 817.

A number of variants of this configuration exist, but it remains unclear as to which specific 'Thomas Weeks' cabinet was the first to have been produced. The vast majority now appear, as with the offered model, to each enclose a clock movement within their pediment, even though when they were made this would possibly not have been the case. Despite this, some propose that within those still housing clocks, the automatic barrel organs would have originally been connected to the striking mechanisms of their corresponding clocks. Regrettably, for all except the Raby Castle example, these period barrel organs have since been removed.

Further closely related Weeks comparables which correspond to this format include a cabinet forming part of the historic collection at Temple Newsam House, in Leeds, which features in C. Gilbert, Furniture at Temple Newsam House and Lotherton Hall, Vol. I, 1978, Leeds, no. 39, pp.'s 55-58. As well as a model illustrated in R. Edwards, The Dictionary of English Furniture, Vol. I, 1954, fig. 171, p. 198, noted as being from the Ashton-Smith Collection at the time of the former's publication.

A few differing versions to the more typical clock-inset type can be found today. These are one with a convex mirror, which is illustrated in L. Synge, Great English Furniture, 1991, London, p. 163, and another housing an almost identical convex mirror to the former, that appears in G. Beard and J. Goodison, English Furniture, 1500-1840, 1987, Oxford, colour pl. 1, p. 230. Also, of interest is an example which incorporates a jasperware panel within the usual central pediment location, that is in P. Macquoid, A History of English Furniture, The Age of Satinwood, 1770-1820, Vol. IV, fig. 187, p. 206.

An almost identical secretaire bookcase to the offered lot, albeit one with a replacement clock which is signed: 'Weeks Museum, Titchborne Street', sold Sotheby's, New York, 31 January 2023, Hyde Park Antiques: Past, Present and Future, Part I, lot 59. Another very similar 'Weeks Museum' variant, one previously purchased from Norman Adams Ltd., sold Bonhams, New Bond Street, 3 June 2015, Fine English Furniture, lot 181. Two further closely related examples purchased at auction include one sold Sotheby's New York, 19-20 April 2001, lot 545 and another which sold Christie's London 27 November 2003, lot 125.

The model which sold in these rooms back in 2015 has a small patch in the right side of the central pediment where the winding handle would have originally been attached. Lord Barnard's cabinet still has the two interchangeable cylinders set with pins designed, as they rotate, to operate valves at the base of the organ pipes behind. With a winding mechanism, a pair of bellows and various dials for selecting one of twelve tunes, as well as for regulating speed and volume.

Ultimately, however, it is important to note that in the earlier discussions on the authorship of the Weeks cabinets no suggestion was made for any particular cabinet maker outside the assumption that they would have undoubtedly been executed by a leading London firm.

Literature
C. Gilbert, Furniture at Temple Newsam and Lotherton Hall, Vol. I, Leeds 1978, pp.'s 56-58.
C. Gilbert, "Some Weeks Cabinets Reconsidered", The Connoisseur Magazine, May 1971.
R. Edwards, The Dictionary of English Furniture, Vol. I, 2000, Woodbridge, fig. 71, p. 198.
L. Synge, Great English Furniture, 1991, London, p. 153.
G. Beard & J Goodison, English Furniture, 1500-1840, 1987, Oxford, p. 230.