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This tall cabinet is in solid purpleheart, and veneers of kingwood on a carcase of oak, beech and softwood, built as a single unit but showing a lower cupboard with two doors, separated by an open recess, lined with pleated red silk, from a single-doored upper cupboard, the door of this set with a panel of marquetry in several kinds of wood, both European and tropical, forming a scene of a man sailing a small boat on a river. The cabinet is set on the sides and lower front with patinated wrought-iron mounts.
The cabinet was shown at the Exposition Universelle in Paris in 1900. It helped to establish Louis Majorelle as the leading maker of furniture in the fashionable Art Nouveau style. He had taken this up in about 1890, under the influence of another Nancy designer and cabinet-maker, Emile Gallé (1846-1904).
Plants and flowers inspired Majorelle's designs, and the stylised natural forms and whiplash curves decorating this cabinet are typical of his work. The unusual form has no real historical predecessor, which helps to highlight the tree motif that grows from the base. Majorelle's family business in Nancy made a number of closely similar cabinets, usually for well-off middle-class clients, and often as part of a suite of furniture.
In this design, Majorelle specified a variety of woods, both home-grown and imported from tropical areas. The cabinet-makers cut them with great skill to exploit the visual effects of different grains and growth patterns.
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