EDWARD WILLIAM GODWIN (1833-1886), PROBABLY FOR WILLIAM WATT HANGING WALL CABINET, CIRCA 1870 ebonised wood, cloisonné panels, mirrored glass

(106cm wide, 65.5cm high, 21.5cm deep)

Footnote: Literature: Soros, Susan The Secular Furniture of E. W. Godwin, Yale 1999, p. 200, no. 320-b, where this cabinet is illustrated. Provenance: Paul Reeves, London Property from an Important Private Collection Note: William Watt (1834-1885) established his upholstery business in 1857; it appears in the directories as William Watt & Co., art furniture manufacturers, 21 Grafton Street, London in 1860. The firm produced and sold some of the finest furniture of the Aesthetic Movement, including cabinets designed by Edward William Godwin like the present example. The cabinet is typical of the Anglo-Japanese style associated with Godwin’s designs. He often incorporated real Japanese artefacts into his work, shopping regularly in the 1870s at Liberty’s East Indian Art Warehouse on Regent Street, which stocked such items. This is possibly where the Japanese cloisonné enamel panels on the cabinet doors came from.