An ebonised medicine cabinet, with gilt-bronze mounts, the lid containing a drawer, and the cabinet opening at back and front, to reveal numerous small compartments.  These contain glass, silver and silver-gilt medicine bottles, as well as two inkwells, a grater, a ladle, a sieve, a silver bowl, a gold bowl, a pestle and mortar, a spatula, a penknife, a brush and a set of scales with weights.  Two further drawers are in the plinth base, which sits on a plain eighteenth-century table stand.  

Throughout the sixteenth century, table cabinets became increasingly desirable in Europe as strongboxes, writing desks, private devotional altars or all combined. The most precious of the type were produced in ebony. As the cabinet maker Bernhard Siedler of Augsburg wrote in 1585, ebony was 'nicht für den gemeinen Mann, sondern für Standes personen' - not for the common man but for persons of rank.  The style was encapsulated in works created by Matthias Wallbaum (see RCIN 37049) and Boas Ulrich, and silver-mounted ebony writing boxes, small altarpieces and cabinets became the speciality of Augsburg in the seventeenth century.  At the same time, there was a growing demand for travelling medicine chests, particularly from surgeons serving on merchant and naval vessels. Some of these could contain as many as 300 small bottles and vials as well as surgical instruments and other paraphernalia. By the seventeenth century they were also in demand in aristocratic households, although often on a smaller scale.
 
Seven silver pots, ladle, bowl, set of four covers and silver spatula or tongue depressor struck with city mark of Augsburg and maker's mark of Raimund Laminit; one silver pot struck with city mark of London (date letter for 1773/4), and maker's mark of Sebastian I and James Crespell; weights struck with sterling mark.