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Special loan: the loan of this exhibit has been made possible with the generous assisitance of Mrs Edmond J. Safra. A pair of rare 19th-century cabinets that belonged to the celebrated collector William Beckford (1760-1844) has been lent to museums in London; one is on show here at the Gilbert Collection and the other will be shown in the new British Galleries at the V&A. William Beckford, the creator of the Gothick Fonthill Abbey and a most discriminating connoisseur, had this gorgeous cabinet made in Paris around 1825. It is richly encrusted with hardstones and luxuriously mounted in gilt bronze and incorporates panels of hardstones made at the celebrated Gobelins workshops in Paris in the late 17th Century. The cabinet embodies the opulent French style - colourful and intensely decorative - that was made fashionable by patrons such as the Prince Regent. The loan of the Beckford cabinet gives visitors to the Gilbert Collection a rare opportunity to see one of the most sumptuous pieces ever commissioned by a British patron in Paris and to compare it with the opulent clock cabinet, also decorated with hardstone panels, commissioned by Beckford's son-in-law, the Duke of Hamilton, and with other material ordered by Beckford now in the Gilbert Collection. |
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