From Spain’s Catalan Modernist Furniture Maker Joan Busquets Studio & Workshop
A Unique work of Cabinetry Art.

JOAN BUSQUETS I (Barcelona, 1874-1949). Modernist Cabinet and Desk, ca. 1898.

Modernist desk and cabinet finely crafted from walnut wood with golden polychrome and pyrography. Keyholes, handles and decorative appliques in golden brass. Signed on the front in the lower left corner of the right door.

Dimensions: 66 inches high and 46 inches wide and 24 inches deep; 165cm x 116cm x 60 cm

This remarkable and unique Catalan modernist cabinet designed by famed furniture designer and maker, Joan Busquets was crafted at Studio Busquets. Barcelona, Spai ca 1898 from walnut wood with fine polychrome gold and decorated with pyrography- the first time in European history that saw this craftsmanship combination of fine studio furniture with fine pyrographic artistic technique. The keyholes, handles and decorative fixtures are made of gilded brass. This Catalan Modernist cabinet was constructed into two (2) sections. The lower cut-out base support section is raised on four stylized legs, with a perpendicularly placed table top- all creatively imagined in a totally sinuous form providing dynamism and originality to this unique design. The upper desk cabinet section has a triple opening, two with hinged doors, one from top to bottom that opens as a desk and the other from left to right revealing two drawers, as well as a top slide out drawer. The interior features several drawers of different sizes all beautifully embellished on their fronts in a golden color pyrography. The entire body of this cabinet desk furniture is richly decorated with typically art nouveau modernist stylized vegetal motifs executed with the artist Busquet’s personal pyrography technique, and finally framed with sinuous moldings in relief.

This is a superb furniture cabinet within the Catalan modernism genre, given that it was produced by one of the best studio workshops of that time, as well as for the perfection and meticulousness with which each of its details have been executed by artrist designer Busquet.

Busquets’ workshop was known to have crafted most of the furniture for Antoni Gaudí Casa Calvet, with this being a prime example.

About Studio Busquet

In 1898 Busquets y Jané introduced for the first time a new technique of polychrome pyrography. This replaced classical marquetry hand craft traditionally applied to furniure of the 19th century. This new design technique was first applied to this cabinet and dates circa 1898. The artist, designer, and decorator Joan Busquets personally hand applied pyrography to his furniture designs and was actively involved in this pyrographic technique widely known of that period as the “Busquets style”.

About La Casa Busquets:

Furniture designer and decorator, Joan Busquets is currently considered one of the most representative artists of Spain’s Catalan modernism. He began his training in his family workshop, and then studied at the Escuela de La Llotja in Barcelona, where his teachers were Guitart and Lostaló. In the 1895-96 academic year he obtained a scholarship that allowed him to travel around Spain, which he obtained thanks to a project for a Renaissance-style bookcase-cabinet. He exhibited furniture projects for the first time at the Barcelona Exhibition of 1896. The workshop of Joan Busquets was one of the most outstanding of modernist Catalonia and is currently, together with the production of Gaspar Homar, the most representative testimony of furniture and decoration known as “Catalan modernism.” He was president of the Fomento de las Artes Decorativas between 1918 and 1921, and supervised the manufacture of furniture for Gaudí’s Casa Calvet. Works by Busquets can currently be found in the National Art Museum of Catalonia, the Güell Palace in Barcelona, the National Museum of Decorative Arts and the Museum of Catalan Modernism in Barcelona, among others, as well as in several important private collections.

This work is reproduced on the cover and in color in the book “La casa Busquets. A history of furniture and decoration from modernism to Art Deco in Barcelona ”, Teresa M. Sala, p. 315. Please refer to our photographs.

Source Provenance: Villa Adauta in La Garriga, Spain.

Collector Provenance: forty year old private American Folk Art Pyrography Collection of Douglas Schneible, Charlotte, Vermont USA

We have been collecting and dealing in authentic American Folk Art Pyrography works of art for more than forty years. Our president has authored an informative article on collecting pyrography and has been collecting what is believed to be the finest and largest international collection of American Folk Art Pyrograpy.

History of the Pyrography:
py·rog·ra·phy, a noun, is the art or technique of decorating wood or leather by burning a design on the surface with a heated metallic point. Pyrography was particular popular in America and Europe during the last quarter of the 19th century and first quarter of the 20th century.

All works of art are guaranteed authentic.