Leonard Joel’s July Decorative Arts auction will include an exceptional nineteenth century New Zealand secretaire cabinet. While there is uncertainty as to its maker, it nevertheless stands as a fine example of the coming together in New Zealand of two traditions in fine cabinet-making: ‘specimen’ wood furniture and ‘exhibition’ furniture.
While much English and European furniture made from the late seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries was decoratively veneered in one style or another, the term ‘specimen’ furniture usually refers to those pieces specifically made to show off a range of specimens of fine and rare woods (or stones, as in pietra dure work). Most effectively applied on pieces with larger flat surfaces such as cabinets, tables, and boxes, thinly-cut pieces of the specimen woods were laid together as veneer, typically by juxtaposing woods of different colour and figuring to striking effect (‘figure’ being the natural features such as pronounced grain patterns or variations in colour in wood or stone).
From the seventeenth century onwards, the use of veneers of fine woods generally reflected the increasing availability of exotic woods, especially highly-figured Asian and South American species, through the expansion of trade and colonial settlement. In early nineteenth century Britain, this was given further impetus by the growing consciousness of Britain as a colonial power, prompting the main period of production of specimen wood furniture – specimens of resources from Britain’s colonies brought into fashionable sitting rooms in England, drawing together the ends of the empire.1 This encompassed both locally-made pieces veneered with imported exotic woods – such as a workbox made by Gillows’ of Lancaster in 1808 veneered with specimens of seventy-two woods, the majority exotic (including four Australian)2 – to pieces made in the colonies for export to Britain, such as circular tables made in Ceylon and India with segmentally-veneered tops in various local woods.
The inter-relationship between colonialism, international trade, and individual countries and manufacturers’ pride in what they were able to contribute to this was further boosted by the various international and Anglo-colonial exhibitions staged in the decades following the landmark Great Exhibition in London in 1851. The recognition and opportunities afforded by these fairs, which were widely reported and illustrated, prompted manufacturers and artisans to make special, often spectacular ‘exhibition’ examples of their work to show off their skills.
Despite its remoteness and relative infancy as a colony (independent from 1841), New Zealand shared in these developments. As traced by William Cottrell in his magisterial work on the subject,3 the variety, quality, and potential appeal to the market of native New Zealand woods, many rich in colour and figuring, was noticed early, with trade in the woods and fine furniture made with them soon following. Several international exhibitions were held in New Zealand, the first in 1865, with local furniture makers contributing superb specimen wood pieces to these and also to important fairs in Australia, Britain, and elsewhere.
The cabinet to be offered in our July auction – a secretaire with ‘secret’ concealed interior – is made with specimens (in solid wood and veneers) of eight or nine different New Zealand species, some with specimens of two or three different types of figuring of each. The veneers are laid in various designs, fields, and borders combined with carved relief centrepieces of fern fronds, peas, and other native plants to the upper panels. It is one of a series of four similar exhibition-type cabinets known to Mr Cottrell, including one of identical design but different details now in the Kauri Museum, Matakohe, and another of different design in the Powerhouse Museum, Sydney, all likely by the same Auckland maker working around 1870–1890 (possibly one H.M. Gill, of whom there is little record).
1. See generally Freya Gowrley, ‘Classical Histories, Colonial Objects: The Specimen Table Across Time and Space’, British Art Studies, 21 (November 2021) (https://britishartstudies.ac.uk/issues/issue-index/issue-21/the-specimen-table-across-time-and-space).
2. Adam Bowett, ‘A Specimen Wood Workbox of 1808 by Gillows, Lancaster’, Regional Furniture, XXV (2011), pp 71–96.
3. William Cottrell, Furniture of the New Zealand Colonial Era: An Illustrated History, 1830–1900 (Auckland, 2006).
By David Parsons, Head of Private Estates & Valuations and Decorative Arts Specialist
Top Image: An Exhibition-Standard New Zealand Specimen Wood Cabinet, Auckland, Circa 1880, possibly by H.M. Gill. $10,000 – 15,000
May 2025