the vitrine with a stepped cornice raised on panelled pilasters to each end and a series of eight hinged doors above the stepped plinth,

This extraordinary cabinet has long had the honour of housing the Pitt River's Museum's priceless collection of artefacts brought back by Captain James Cook's first and second expeditions on which he discovered and mapped the east coast of Australia, New Zealand and many Pacific islands (1768-71 and 1772-75).

The cabinet, in a flame mahogany - probably Honduran or Cuban - stands apart from the other, numerous vitrines at the Museum and LASSCO suspects that it may well have started its life at the British museum: it is similar to others that we have had from Bloomsbury in the past. it has been in Oxford for many decades and The Pitt Rivers do not have a record of its acquisition in order to support this theory.

Condition: the cabinet dis-assembles into its component parts with the show-timber on the cornice and plinth being the most challenging at 7m long. The polish of the mahogany has deteriorated with age - commensurate with a few decades of museum life. The locks are still present and we have a key.