This ‘coffer’ is one of an original set of four display cabinets on oak stands (its stand is now missing). The set was made for William Beckford (1760–1844), probably to his own design, for Lansdown Tower, Bath. Beckford was the son of an immensely rich and highly cultivated sugar-planter, and himself became one of the most important collectors and patrons of his generation. His most famous creation, the extravagant mock-Gothic Fonthill Abbey in Wiltshire, was built from the late 1790s on the site of his father’s mansion Fonthill Splendens. In 1823, however, Fonthill Abbey and its contents had to be sold to pay off Beckford’s accumulated debts. Beckford afterwards moved to 20 Lansdown Crescent in Bath. About a mile uphill from the house he built Lansdown Tower in neo-Renaissance style to house his re-growing art collection. He collaborated with his architect H. E. Goodridge to design the interiors and furnishings, including the set of coffers on stands, which stood in the corners of the ‘Scarlet Drawing Room’. They housed some of Beckford’s most precious works of art, their sober, ginger palette serving as a foil to the glittering objects of gilt metail and colourful hardstone that they contained. In 1841 the coffers were altered for Beckford by the Bath cabinet-making firm of English & Son. It is likely that they had also made the coffers in their original form, about ten years earlier. Coffer-shaped cabinet, made with a carcase of oak, decorated with pollard oak and with gilt-bronze mounts. The coffered top section is 'blind' and the glazed door below opens on a red silk-lined interior. Solid and veneered oak (of two varieties) with gilt-bronze mounts and glazed door; the interior lined with the original(?) red watered silk COFFER-SHAPED CABINET 1831-1841 The great collector William Beckford used a variety of historic styles in his interiors. In this cabinet the studded, barrel-shaped top and round-arched ends evoke the early Italian Renaissance. It is one of a set of four commissioned by Beckford for the Scarlet Drawing Room at Lansdown Tower, Bath, to display his most valued works of art. Solid and veneered oak (two varieties), gilt-bronze mounts, glass, red silk Commissioned by William Beckford (born in England, 1760, died in Bath, 1844); probably designed by Beckford and the architect H. E. Goodridge (1797-1864); made by English & Son, Bath Purchased with the assistance of the Art Fund and the Friends of the V&A Museum no. W.3-2006 [2006] Coffer-shaped cabinet of solid and veneered oak (of two varieties), with gilt-bronze mounts and glazed door; the watered silk lining possibly original