Christie’s announced yesterday they will be selling the famed “Badminton Cabinet” – the furniture world’s answer to the $104 million Picasso. The ornate cabinet, made of ebony and gilt bronze and inlaid with mosaic of colorful stones, became the most expensive piece of furniture in the world when it sold at Christie’s London in 1990 for $15.2 million. It is even listed as such in the Guinness Book of Records.

Now it seems the buyer is ready to cash out. On December 9 in London, Christie’s will re-offer the monumental 12-foot Italian cabinet on behalf of Barbara Piasecka Johnson, of Johnson & Johnson fortune. The estimate is tagged as “in excess of 8 million pounds” (more than $14 million) and since the piece fetched about $15 million at Christie’s 14 years ago, Mrs. Johnson is probably banking on a profit. She is also selling an old master painting, to be sold at Christie’s in a December painting sale.

The seller is no auction-room novice. The Polish-born collector sold an Andrea Mantegna for $28.5 million in 2002 at Sotheby’s, and at a single-owner sale on Oct. 15, 2003, at Sotheby’s Paris, she unloaded the contents of her Monaco pad; some 220 lots totaling about $6 million – chump change compared to the cabinet. She was reported to have decided to abandon Monaco for her country spread in Tuscany – such are the real-estate travails of the billionaire set. In 2003, Forbes pegged her wealth at $2.3 billion, mostly in Johnson & Johnson stock she acquired the old-fashioned way, by snagging a son of Johnson & Johnson’s founder. “Former chambermaid struck gold” is how Forbes delicately put it.

The cabinet has had as colorful past as its owner. It was commissioned in 1726 by Henry Somerset, 3rd Duke of Beaufort from the Grand Ducal workshops. The duke was just 19 when he ordered up the cabinet, a piece so elaborate that it is estimated to have kept 30 craftsmen working for more than five years. Bronze casters, gilders, stonecutters, cabinetmakers, and sculptures were engaged, in addition to artists who made models for the four statues of the Four Seasons surmounting the four corners. The cabinet was destined for the duke’s family pile, a Palladian-style mansion.

The duke was inspired to order the cabinet following his 1925 Grand Tour. He traveled the continent with his tutor and friend William Phillips, who later tried to steal some of the duke’s Italian artworks. The cabinet was shipped to England in 1732, and the original shipping papers are located in the archive, discovered by Her Majesty Queen Mary, who had taken refuge there during World War II by the good graces of her niece, the wife of the 10th Duke.

Christie’s is putting their considerable might behind the cabinet and believes it has surpassed being a piece of mere furniture. Instead, it has star billing as an “architectural monument.” Perhaps with that tagline, and with real-estate prices what they are, it can be called a bargain.