A REGENCY MAHOGANY CABINET OR 'RECESS'

This intriguing cabinet or ‘recess’ graced the Third Vase Room at Thomas Hope’s palatial London creation on Duchess Street, and is shown above a chimneypiece in plate 4 of Hope’s ‘Household Furniture and Interior Decoration’ housing elements of Hope’s vast collection of Greek and Roman antiquities.
It is likely the execution of this recess was undertaken by the enigmatic Peter Bogaert, of whom little is known but who appears to have worked in London from 1786 until at least 1819; Hope refers to ‘two men, to whose industry and talent I could in some measure confide the execution of the more complicate [sic] and more enriched portion of my designs; namely Decaix and Bogaert: the first a bronzist, and a native of France; the other a carver, and born in the Low Counties.’ (T. Hope, Household Furniture and Interior Decoration, London, 1807, p. 10.) A table, originally at Duchess Street, which bears the idiosyncratic classical vision of Hope and also attributed to Bogaert is in the collections of the V&A (see W.1-2004).