Furniture in the Dock: The Shrager-Dighton Trial of 1923.

本申请旨在确保研究休假，以便完成我自2007年初以来一直从事的一项研究的专著。这项研究的重点是1923年斯拉格-迪顿审判后产生的1044页手稿，该手稿目前长期借给布莱顿博物馆和艺术画廊的大卫·比弗斯。在珀西·麦奎德的命令下，在试验完成后，只有一份试验手稿的副本被制作出来，并且没有完成任何重要的工作来绘制其内容或探索其对家具历史和二十世纪早期家具市场发展的意义。1922年，在第一次世界大战期间赚了一大笔钱的阿道夫·施拉格（Adolphe Shrager）决定为他在海边韦斯特盖特（Westgate）买的一所房子装修。他本人并不是家具专家，于是有人把他介绍给伦敦商人巴兹尔·迪顿（Basil Dighton），后者卖给了他大约500件家具。不久之后，施莱格获得了其中一件作品的估价，他惊恐地发现，作为古董购买的这件作品被判定为新近建造的。家具制造商赫伯特·切辛斯基（Herbert Cescinsky）在咨询后赞同这一观点，他著有多本关于家具历史的重要著作，宣称这些物品都是赝品，而且价格严重过高，导致法院向戴顿及其公司发出了一份令状，称这些家具是“经过修改、捏造和伪造的”。这场审判于1923年1月和2月在官方裁判法庭进行，随后在7月进行了上诉，这在家具史上引起了轰动，其中一方是施莱格和切辛斯基，另一方是迪顿和他的专家珀西·麦格伊德。麦库伊德和切辛斯基是家具历史学科的两位奠基人，这门学科在20世纪初开始蓬勃发展，它起源于18世纪晚期的图案书。这个案例要求我们对家具历史的书写及其与拍卖室的联系提出疑问，在20世纪20年代，历史书提供的物品开始在拍卖行拍出巨额价格。施莱格在一审和上诉中败诉的事实，尽管他在许多场合表明他有明确的理由反对戴顿，也提出了关于种族和阶级问题的问题，在那里，建制派，以英国绅士商人的形式，“似乎无可挑剔的社会证书”，由受过马尔伯勒教育，婚姻美满的麦格伊德支持，团结起来反对施莱格，一个犹太人，被反对派描述为战争谋利者，由切辛斯基支持，熟练工做橱柜的。

This application seeks to secure research leave in order to complete a monograph on a piece of research that I have been working on since early 2007. This research focuses on a 1044 page manuscript produced after the 1923 Shrager-Dighton trial which is currently on long-loan to David Beevers at Brighton Museum and Art Gallery. There was only ever one copy of the trial manuscript produced, on the orders of Percy Macquoid after the trial was complete and no significant work has ever been completed on it to either map its contents or explore its significance for furniture history and for the development of the market in furniture in the early twentieth century.In 1922, Adolphe Shrager, having made significant sums of money during the First World War, decided to furnish a house he had bought in Westgate on Sea. Not being an expert on furniture himself, he was directed to the London dealer Basil Dighton, who sold him about five hundred items. On obtaining a valuation of one of these pieces shortly afterwards, Shrager was horrified to find that, having been purchased as an antique, it was judged of recent construction. On consultation, Herbert Cescinsky, a furniture maker and the author of a number of key texts on furniture history, endorsed this view, declaring the objects as both fake and grossly over-priced, leading to a writ being issued against Dighton and his company, citing the furniture as 'altered and made up and spurious'. The trial, heard at the Official Referee's Court in January and February 1923, and the subsequent appeal in July, has become a cause celebre in furniture history, featuring, on one side, Shrager and Cescinsky and on the other, Dighton and his expert, Percy Macquoid. Macquoid and Cescinsky were two of the founding fathers of the discipline of furniture history, which was beginning to blossom in the early twentieth century from its roots in the pattern books of the late eighteenth century. The case demands that we ask questions about the writing of furniture history and its links to the sale rooms, where objects provided with provenance by the history books began to fetch huge prices in the auction house in the 1920s. The fact that Shrager lost both the first trial and the appeal, despite demonstrating on numerous occasions that he had a clear case against Dighton also raises questions about issues of race and class, where the establishment, in the form of the English gentleman dealer of 'seemingly impeccable social credentials', backed up by the Marlborough educated, well-married Macquoid, closed ranks against Shrager, a Jew, presented by the opposition as a war profiteer, supported by Cescinsky, the journeyman cabinet maker.