The Table Cabinets
Courtesy private collection, UK
‘ 1 cabinett of turtle shell .. £4 ‘
From the inventory of merchant Thomas Willett, d. August 1674, The Plymouth Colony Archive Project.
Only four of these wonderful cabinets have been recorded by the craftsman of Port Royal. They must surely rank as their finest work, and were no doubt made for the most important of that society. Surely made for a specific commission or dedicatees and yet strangely none are inscribed.
Each cabinet is discussed in detail.
For cabinets of such complexity, they are diminutive in size, of around 11” wide 7¼” high and 6¾” inches deep as the craftsman were limited to their largest plaques of shell available to them.
All images on this page courtesy private collections, UK