The Flax and Wool Cabinet or the Flax and Wool Wardrobe is a large piece of painted furniture designed by the English architect and designer William Burges.
[1] The cabinet is one of three large pieces of furniture that Burges designed that were displayed at the Architectural Exhibition in Connaught Street, London, in 1859.
[2] The cabinet is part of the private collection of the Italian art collectors Francesca and Massimo Valsecchi, and was displayed as part of a selection of pieces from their collection at the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge, England, in 2017.
[4] 'Flax' is portrayed as a girl holding a distaff and 'Wool' as a shepherd playing a pipe.
[5] It was described by art historian J. Mordaunt Crook in the 2012 reissue of his book William Burges and the High Victorian Dream as the simplest of the five pieces that Yatman commissioned from Burges between 1855 and 1859, and that its design is "nothing if not plain-spoken" with "quaintly Arcadian" symbolism.