Desk
The cabinetmaking partnership of German immigrant Anton Kimbel and French-born Joseph Cabus pioneered an inventive take on the Modern Gothic, also known as Reform Gothic, style in America. This desk, a particularly dynamic and commanding example of their work, embodies the firm’s engagement with a diverse array of sources and sensibilities. Here the design philosophies of British reformers Bruce James Talbert, Charles Locke Eastlake and Christorpher Dresser are synthesized with Continental European design sources and further enlivened by vernacular Germanic furniture traditions. The carved scene of stags flanking a tree on the drop-front and the lively squirrels on the lower doors evoke eighteenth and nineteenth-century "Black Forest" furnishings produced in the German and Swiss countryside, while the desk’s design also references the work of the contemporary German architect, Edwin Oppler. Indeed, a design published in 1875 in Oppler’s design journal Die Kunst im Gewerbe may well have been the source for the decorative carving on the drop-front panel. The desk’s upper section also bears intriguing similarities to a design for a summer house published in another German design journal, Die Gewerbehalle (The Workshop). At once virtuosic, innovative, and rooted in tradition, this desk attests to Kimbel and Cabus’s distinctive artistic vision.
Artwork Details
- Title: Desk
- Manufacturer: Kimbel and Cabus (American, New York, 1863–1882)
- Maker: Anton Kimbel (1822–1895)
- Maker: Joseph Cabus (1824–1898)
- Date: ca. 1875
- Geography: Made in New York, New York, United States
- Culture: American
- Medium: American black walnut, tulip poplar, and metal
- Dimensions: 79 1/2 × 42 × 14 1/4 in. (201.9 × 106.7 × 36.2 cm)
- Credit Line: Friends of the American Wing Fund, 2025
- Object Number: 2025.723
- Curatorial Department: The American Wing
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Kimbel and Cabus (American, New York, 1863–1882)
ca. 1875
Kimbel and Cabus (American, New York, 1863–1882)
ca. 1875–80
Kimbel and Cabus (American, New York, 1863–1882)
ca. 1875–80
Kimbel and Cabus (American, New York, 1863–1882)
ca. 1875–80
Kimbel and Cabus (American, New York, 1863–1882)
ca. 1874
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