Ballyfin table-top cabinet ‘mesmerising’

The aristocratic Coote family left Ireland after the War of Independence and returned to England. Ballyfin in Co Laois - their magnificent house in the Slieve Bloom hills - was sold to the Catholic Patrician Brothers who ran a boarding school there throughout the 20th century.

The house was then sold to Fred Krehbiel, a wealthy Chicago businessman, who has turned "Ballyfin Demesne" into Ireland's most expensive and exclusive hotel where nightly room rates average €1,000.

Auctioneers Bonhams said a table-top cabinet made in Augsburg, Germany during the mid-17th century was "almost certainly purchased for Ballyfin by Sir Charles Henry Coote, 9th Baronet, in the first half of the nineteenth century" and that "until 2006 it was kept in the family despite the sale of the house in the 1920s.

The cabinet, known as a ‘Kunstkammer’ stands roughly 85cm high and wide, is made of ebony, silver and Italian ‘pietre dure’ panels, and is the star lot in the European Furniture, Sculpture, and Works of Art sale at Bonhams, New Bond Street on December 5th, with a pre-sale estimate of £ 400,000-600,000.

It contains some 40-plus drawers or compartments, some hidden, and all lined with exotic silks and intricate wooden marquetry.

Bonhams said the "museum quality" cabinet, made in about 1660 by Elias Boscher, was "truly mesmerising" the cabinet, made in about 1660, was "truly mesmerising" and crepresented "a zenith in Continental decorative furniture making". It would have been used to "house a collections of 'curiosities' such as precious stones and metals, shells, minerals, scientific instruments and other prized possessions, designed to reflect the entire cosmos on a miniature scale".