Kabinettskap

The cabinet belongs to an exclusive group of fine furniture. This type of cabinet has long legs and many small drawers behind the cabinet doors, and is also known as a curiosity cabinet because they often contained collections of curiosities. 

They were made for wealthy clients in the city of Eger in the former Kingdom of Bohemia, now the Czech Republic, from around 1630 to around 1720, and were called Eger cabinets. The cabinets were particularly sought-after due to the complicated relief intarsia, where the motif is made to stand out in relief from the background surface using different types of wood. The method was introduced by Adam Eck in around 1630, and was copied by several workshops in Eger. 

Thirty Years' War

The cabinet's mid panel personify the just war Bellum Justum glorifying the end of the Thirty Years War in Europe in 1648. Such cabinets were often given as gifts to distinguished persons in the military at the end of the war, including to the Swedish count and field marshal Carl Gustav Wrangel. Wrangel's cabinet was known as the Wrangelschrank and is preserved at Skokloster castle outside Stockholm. The cabinet also shows two other motifs associated with the Thirty Years' War: a figure on horseback and the naval battle at Fehmarn in 1644. The latter motif was taken directly from Matthäus Merian's illustrated book Theatrum Europaeum (1633–1650). Merian was a well-known Swiss artisan, author and book publisher. He was a highly influential mediator of ideas from southern Europe to northern countries. 

Fashionable

The other motifs, with female characters depicting morning, day, evening and night, are more freely composed. The outfits with great lace collars, which were high fashion, are taken directly from Merian's student Wenzel  Hollar's (1607–77) copper engraving The Four Seasons, published in London in 1643. In this engraving Hollar depicted the different fashions of the year, and the figures on the cabinet doors show spring, summer, autumn and winter. Winter is dressed in a carnival mask, fur muff, leather boa and fur-trimmed shoes and shows the remarkable compositional skills and artistic relief intarsia that characterise Adam Eck's works. These have never been surpassed, before or since, in the history of furniture.