BVRB's commodes

This volume is devoted to a pair of cabinets, marked ‘BVRB’, which may well be the last pieces of furniture produced by the renowned Parisian cabinetmaker Bernard van Risenburgh II just before he retired in 1764 and handed over his workshop to his son, Bernard van Risenburgh III, who completed them. They are adorned with panels of black and gold Japanese lacquer of exceptional quality, taken from a 17th-century Japanese chest of drawers, trunk or screen. From the 1730s onwards, the elder van Risenburgh worked almost exclusively with the influential ‘marchands-merciers’, or dealers in luxury goods, who supplied the cabinetmaker with rare and costly oriental lacquers, as well as, on occasion, the designs for the pieces of furniture on which to mount them.

The Frick Diptych Series is a collection of publications by the Frick Collection. Each volume is dedicated to an iconic work of art from the museum and explores it from two perspectives: an essay by a museum curator combined with a text by a contemporary artist or writer. This volume includes an essay by Marie-Laure Buku Pongo, a curator at the Frick, as well as a contribution by William Christie, a world-renowned conductor and harpsichordist.