As we saw in Part I of this article, Jean Pelletier's younger son Thomas took over the management of the family business in 1702. In November 1704, a month before his father's death, Thomas was appointed Cabinetmaker in Ordinary to Queen Anne (see the Appendix below, Document III).1 Curiously, however, there are no direct payments to him in the Lord Chamberlain's accounts and, as a result, his work for the queen has not hitherto been recognised. A careful reading of the Lord Chamberlain's accounts for that reign shows that in 1703 the cabinetmaker Gerrit Jensen, who had formerly specialised in veneered furniture, was suddenly supplying giltwood items. It seems probable that Jensen subcontracted this giltwood furniture to carvers and gilders outside his own workshop and, as the dates of the bills for giltwood from Jensen are earlier than Thomas Pelletier's royal appointment, it is plausible that Jensen may have given the work to Thomas and Rene Pelletier and others, probably including Robert Derignee. Indeed Jensen's 'Boulle' mirrors at Boughton (Fig. 1) have giltwood crestings and inner fillets which may also have been supplied by an outworker.2 At Windsor Castle, Buckingham Palace and Warwick Castle there are several pieces of giltwood furniture originally made for Queen Anne which can plausibly be attributed to the Pelletier brothers on the strength of their similarity to earlier pieces ascribed to the family in Part I.

Just over a century ago, in 1897, Michelangelo Guggenheim published an anthology of photographs of more than a hundred Italian renaissance frames, Le Cornici italiane dalla meta del secolo XV allo scorcio del XVI, the first major contribution to scholarship in this branch of art history. Guggenheim was one of the leading art dealers in Venice, engaged in selling 'jugs and rugs and candlesticks' as well as paintings and sculptures and, perhaps partly because he supplied museums, he developed a scholarly interest in his wares which eventually overtook his commercial interests. He bequeathed to his native city a great collection of historic textiles and another of old ornamental wood carvings.'