Strauss & co - 22 October 2012, Cape Town

253 An important Cape stinkwood, beefwood, ebony and silver- mounted armoire, 18th century the arched moulded cornice surmounted by foliate cresting, above a pair of panelled doors enclosing a shelf, the lock-plate engraved after the frontis of Archetypa Studiaque Patris, Georgio Hoefnagelii, 1592, the lower half applied with a pair of Cape silver handles above a pair of panelled doors enclosing a shelf, with canted corners carved with ebony panels headed by leaf-cresting, on three massive paw and ball feet, Cape silver mounts by Johan Hendrik Vos, 257cm high, 182cmwide, 52cmdeep R800 000 – 1 000 000 The engraving on the lock-plate of this armoire is copied from the frontis of the influential pattern book and one of the principal sources of seventeenth century still-life painting, Archetypa Studiaque Patris Georgio Hoefnagelii . The work was engraved by Jacob Hoefnagel (1573-1635), court painter to Emperior Rudolph II of Prague from 1602, under the supervision of his father Jours (1542-1601) last of the great Flemish miniaturists and manuscript illluminators. LITERATURE Stephan Welz, Cape Silver and Silversmiths, Balkema, Cape Town, 1976, page 156, illustration mark 150 253 details 253 71