A NORTH ITALIAN IVORY-INLAID EBONY TABLE-CABINET

Born in Faenza, Giovanni Battista Gatti (1816-1889) was apprenticed to the Falcini brothers in Florence, who specialised in marquetry, before establishing a workshop in Rome under the patronage of Cardinal Amat. Gatti was famed for his ebony and ivory intarsia, combining rinceau ornament of stylized vines, urns and flowers, with cameo portrait medallions and Cinquecento strapwork. Gatti's furniture is often further embellished with the use of semi-precious hardstones such as the malachite and lapis luzuli beads used here.

Gatti won a first class medal at the 1855 Paris Exposition Universelle for a spectacular bureau-cabinet, commissioned for William, 11th Duke of Hamilton, sold at the 1882 Christie's sale of the Hamilton Palace Collection (lot 1186) and again at Christie's, London, 28 October 1993, lot 287. He also exhibited in Vienna in 1873 and Paris in 1878. He showed two table cabinets, both very similar to the present lot, at the international exhibitions in London in 1862 and Paris in 1867 (see E. Colle, Il Mobile dell'Ottocento in Italia, Milan, 2007, pp. 392-395, 443-444).