A cheery coincidence yesterday, noting that the theme for the special exhibition at the San Francisco Fall Antiques Show is chinoiserie. This followed fairly quickly with an email notice from Enos Reese Interior Design of the launch of their new website. Mark Enos and Carmen Reese are designers we’ve been happy to know for a number of years. Amongst their design portfolio is a mid Wilshire high rise featuring, you guessed it, a piece from Chappell & McCullar, and, right again, it was a bit of chinoiserie, a red japanned George II period coffer.
Interesting, this fanciful piece is actually composed of rather durable vernacular materials, 
with the quarter sawn oak of the casework making it a practical as well as a decorative piece. Oak seems to have been popular for the European construction of furniture meant to look far eastern. These pieces often were a marriage of a European made stand to support a Chinese lacquer cabinet. This example is entirely European, English in this case, and constitutes a collaborative effort from at least three workshops- a joiner for the cabinet, a carver for the stand, and a painter-stainer for the surface decoration of both pieces. 
Actually, I left one workshop out- a clock maker for the construction of the brass hinges and lockplates, finely wrought, and perhaps more precisely made than the Chinese metalwork it sought to imitate.
The use of oak makes for an eminently practical choice. Durable, of course, but with the use of quartersawn planks in construction, also less likely to warp and expand and contract, which movement would damage the surface decoration. I have to say, on both pieces, the decoration is in surprisingly good condition. Also, in the case of the cabinet on 
stand, it is particularly important the piece maintain its structural integrity to allow access to its hidden compartments. Nothing worse, I’d imagine, than when trying to access the treasures hidden within, to find the drawers warped shut. And the treasures we found? Sad to say, nothing beyond some late 17th century dust.