A chest of drawers attributed to the Gebrüder Spindler
Walnut, kingwood, maple, and coloured wood veneers on softwood, partially engraved and with black contours, ormolu mountings. Two-drawer bombé-form corpus with flat back panel, on short flaring supports. The front decorated with characteristic three-part rocaille cartouche and precisely rendered veneers. Depicted in the centre a large basket of flowers with chequerboard pattern marquetry, flanked by flowering sprigs. The sides of the chest each with flowering tendrils surrounding a vase. The top with a central cartouche surrounding a depiction of a nereid and a putto flanked by three-dimensional chequerboard marquetry. The lower drawer containing the lock. With remnants of an inventory label to the reverse. The ammended mountings with the coat of arms of the barons of Plotho presumably slightly later. H 80.5, W 14, D 64 cm.
Bayreuth, attributed to Johann Friedrich and Heinrich Wilhelm Spindler, circa 1760.
Erich Christoph Edler Herr and Freiherr von Plotho (1707 - 1788) became district president of Magdeburg in 1742. In 1754, Friedrich II appointed him state minister of Prussia. He married his wife Charlotte Wilhelmine Eleonore Freiin von Bodenhausen in 1743. She brought properties in the margraviates of Ansbach and Bayreuth into the marriage, to which Erich Christoph would often withdraw. It is conceivable that he purchased this chest of drawers from Spindler's workshop in Bayreuth and later added the mountings with his family coat of arms.
Provenance
Former Kunsthandel Fischer-Böhler, Munich.
Private collection, Westphalia.
Literature
Illus. in: Kreisel, Die Kunst des deutschen Möbel, vol. II, Munich 1970, illus. 790.
Cf. also Sangl, Spindler?, in: Journal of the Furniture History Society, Leeds 1992, vol. XXVII, p. 22-66.