Bureau-cabinet

Vizagapatam, a port on the Coromandel Coast of eastern India, emerged as a center for cabinet making at the end of the 17th century. Its craftsmen married the Indian technique of ivory inlay to European forms to produce furniture of exceptional luxury for an English clientele. This bureau-cabinet, based on early 18th-century English prototypes, is decorated with floral motifs drawn from traditional Indian ornament. Anglo-Indian furniture such as this piece appeared exotic both to the Indian craftsmen who produced it and to the English clients who commissioned it.