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Lockwood de Forest (1850-1932) Bookcasecirca 1890teak, glass, carved by the Ahmedabad Wood Carving Company, Ahmedabad, India, possibly assembled in New Yorkheight 63in (160cm); width 78in (198cm); depth 14in (35.5cm) image 1
Lockwood de Forest (1850-1932) Bookcasecirca 1890teak, glass, carved by the Ahmedabad Wood Carving Company, Ahmedabad, India, possibly assembled in New Yorkheight 63in (160cm); width 78in (198cm); depth 14in (35.5cm) image 2
Lot 96W

Lockwood de Forest (1850-1932)
Bookcase
circa 1890
teak, glass, carved by the Ahmedabad Wood Carving Company, Ahmedabad, India, possibly assembled in New York
height 63in (160cm); width 78in (198cm); depth 14in (35.5cm)

6 – 7 October 2020, 11:00 EDT
New York

Sold for US$10,075 inc. premium

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Lockwood de Forest (1850-1932)

Bookcase
circa 1890
teak, glass, carved by the Ahmedabad Wood Carving Company, Ahmedabad, India, possibly assembled in New York
height 63in (160cm); width 78in (198cm); depth 14in (35.5cm)

Footnotes

A comparable but smaller glazed bookcase can be found at Olana, landscape painter Frederick Edwin Church's family home and studio near Hudson, NY (OL.1981.1122). Church was Lockwood de Forest's great-uncle, mentor and patron, and his building of Olana (started in 1867, finally completed in the late 1880s) helped inspire Lockwood de Forest to pursue interior design. De Forest supplied numerous items to Olana, including several fireplaces, traceries, chairs, a hexagonal table and a desk, and was apparently involved in the later stages of the architectural work there. Olana remains one of the few historic locations where de Forest's work can be viewed largely intact and in its original setting.

Although De Forest offered completed articles shipped directly from India, for ostensibly practical purposes a large number of De Forest's furniture pieces were composed of stock elements carved at the Ahmedabad workshop and assembled into furniture in New York. Having a ready stock of carved elements in New York meant that custom design orders could be made up in the United States removing the potential long waits for such orders to come from India.

Literature
Roberta Mayer, Lockwood de Forest, 'Furnishing the Gilded Age with Passion for India, Newark', 2008, pp. 128-135 for a discussion on De Forest, Church, and Olana, the similar bookcase illustrated on p. 135.

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