Flemish Cabinet

For those in the Cabinet of Curiosities course, you will have (or will get) a lesson on Flemish Cabinet and how they relate to English embroidered caskets.  We view over a dozen of them in the lesson.  Well, another one has come to my attention and was sold here in Boston in 2003.  Unfortunately there aren't any close pictures of the piece, but it is clear that the embroidery is of the same professional type as most of the others, the the design style being replicated as well.  The height of the piece is 17 inches with a width of 18.25 inches.  It sold for just under $10,000 in 2003.

These ebony cabinets were a unique product mass produced to be sold to middle class families in England and France during the first quarter of the 17th century.  Very few were retained in the Low Countries as this was an export item made for foreign distributors.  It is the mirrored space (behind a door in this piece) that was replicated in many of our English caskets and represented education and learning to the purchaser.