Writing cabinet

After the Peace of Westphalia (1648), initially Italian then French influence is discernible in furniture art, too, in the German principalities. Here court art and burgher art diverged more sharply than elsewhere in Europe. Burgher art followed court art, but transplanted the new, baroque style to a degree appropriate to the burgher way of life, and was strongly linked to local traditions. As in earlier centuries, Augsburg, a goldsmith’s art centre with an illustrious past and also a domain of silversmiths, continued to be a centre for the making of prestige furniture. It was here in the first half of the 18th century that Johann Rumpp’s ‘Burger und Silberkistler’ furniture design drawings appeared in Martin Engelbrecht’s edition under the title Tischler oder Schreiner Risse. Among these plans we have already found the small cabinet based on a desk and called a comptoir or contoir in the Rhineland and in Augsburg that in actual fact is a piece of storage furniture formed from a cabinet on a stand with the omission of the two closing doors. The frontal fashioning of the drawers composed around the cabinet part with its middle door is curved, the middle part stands out above it. It is taller, and essentially is already of the same arrangement as the burea–cabinet with an upper part. The lower middle drawer transforms into a small writing cabinet with a flat pulldown side between the table and the contoir. The influence of the abovementioned designs of Johann Rumpp (1702–1755) finds expression on this comparatively early writing cabinet bearing the year 1714, on which the main role is given to the balustered legs reinforced with struts curving, lively frontal surfaces, and the volutes and curves creating light-andshade contrasts. This piece of furniture is characterised by enormous size, spectacular richness of forms and an already almost theatrical magnificence. Examples akin to it can be found in numerous collections in South Germany.