Ebony veneered parallelepiped teak cabinet on stand, richly decorated in exotic timbers marquetry and natural and green died ivory fixed by small ivory pins. The copper mounts and hardware are mercury gilt.The cabinet front, composed of six drawers, simulating nine, are arranged over three identical tiers framed by ivory filleting adorned by lines of regularly spaced convex headed copper tacks.The ebony veneered drawer fronts, framed by double ivory fillets, are filled by stylised symmetrical vegetal elements in white and green died ivory, encircling the elegantly cut and pierced lock escutcheon.On the cabinet top and sides the decorative compositions are centred by a large field of juxtaposed cubes of alternating colour faces in white, green and brown, framed by a border of symmetrical eight petal flowers, interspersed with parallel ivory pins. This central panel is encased in a wide band of exuberant vegetal elements, identical to those adorning the front of the cabinet, terminating in a second border of eight petal rosettes, highlighted by double filleting and protected by cut and pierced gilt copper corner pieces.The cabinet stand, of two drawers on its upper section and a large open compartment or shelf at mid-height, is elegantly designed with arched front and sides framed by alfiz, an Islamic architectonic ornament consisting of a mould rectangular frame enclosing the outward side of an arch, decorated by vegetal elements encased by bands of corolla.The stand legs and feet are defined by nāgini, Hindu deities connected to water, depicted with women’s torsos - touching their own breasts in an allusion to fertility, and a coiled snake tail in place of legs. In this instance they are also represented with an ajna, a third eye between the eyebrows that alludes to their intuitive capacities. The figures stand on rectangular plinths.In the history of Indo-Portuguese art, marquetry decorated furniture has been allocated to four main production centres: Goa, Cochin, the Portuguese Indian State Northern Province and Sindh in Northern India (present day Pakistan), the latter of Mughal influence, an Empire whose main artistic and cultural achievements emerge at the end of the 16th century with Emperor Akbar the Great (r. 1556-1605) and mainly with Shah Jahan (r.1628-1658) and Aurangzeb (r.1658-1707).It is historically known that from the mid-16th century, the Portuguese were importing marquetry pieces of furniture to decorate the domestic interiors of wealthy courtiers and merchants houses. Most certainly these pieces originated from the Portuguese Indian State Northern Province from such cities as Chaul, Bassein, Diu and Thane (close to Mumbai), where various cabinet making workshops, known for the quality and detail of inlaid decorative details, had established themselves. In a recently published cargo manifest, compiled by the Portuguese Indian State treasurer Manuel Leitão in 1559, detailing the contents of the Portuguese ship Garça there is effectively a listing for “a new marquetry writing cabinet on stand made in Thane” (1). Other references to the Northern Province are rather common along the 17th century, namely the following description by Friar João dos Santos (1560-1622) in Ethiopia Orientale Vária História de Cousas Notáveis do Oriente, “by this Chaul river, up from our part of the city, about half a league away, there is the village of our Muslim neighbours, caller Upper Chaul. In it live other pagans, mostly merchants and craftsmen, particularly textile weavers, marquetry cabinets and campaign bed makers and of other pieces” clearly specifying that the workshops were located in an Hindu village close the city of Chaul (2).Cabinets were such popular typologies in aristocratic and wealthy merchant homes that in the inventory for the widow of Garcia de Melo Torres there are listed as having come from India in between 1583 - 1592 and 1605 - 1614, “a teak cabinet embellished in ebony and ivory marquetry...” and “another Indian cabinet of green and white marquetry...” (3). Additionally, in 1635, António Bocarro (1594-1642), official chronicler and keeper of Goa’s Archives, reports that in Thane were made “...excellent writing boxes, cabinets and tables, with ebony and ivory marquetry, more lasting than any others from this part of the state...” (4).On the subject of some inlaid furniture pieces known as “from Goa”, and considering the absence of clear references to such productions, several doubts remain as to their truly Goan origin. The only certainty is that, beyond the religious nature of some pieces, undoubtedly of Goan manufacture for their large dimensions or commissioned for specific locations, there were also other pieces made in that territory in some considerable numbers, which were inlaid in timbers of various shades, forming geometric patterns with ivory detailing, known as “diaprés”, whose production can be confidently dated to the 17th century.
The shape of this rare cabinet, influenced by European prototypes, suggests a Portuguese order to Thane, a city that, as we have seen, was exporting as early as 1559. Of clear Persian influenced decoration, usual in Mughal pieces and in those produced in the Portuguese State of India Northern Province, with some characteristics of the luxurious decorative grammars from the Sultanates of the Deccan, particularly Bijapur and Ahmednagar, both resulting from the political disintegration of the Sultanate of Bahmani (1347-1518), a well-known bastion of Persian culture in the Indian sub-continent before the 16th century (5).The rarity of this cabinet is defined by its perfect proportions, the exceptional quality of manufacture and the highly sophisticated decoration, all adapted to its reduced scale, which suggests a piece of furniture made specifically for use on a platform (estrado), a domestic raised area, retained in Portugal from the long Islamic presence, where women sat or kneeled . This possibility is reinforced by the plain, undecorated back surface that would have been placed against a wall.For all its characteristics this small cabinet, dated to the late 16th century, is one of the most important examples of Thane’s inlaid furniture production.