Lot Essay
This remarkable wing armchair has the unusual distinction of having been owned by two of the greatest and pioneering collectors of English Furniture. The celebrated connoisseur Sir George Donaldson (d. 1924) formed a 'Private Museum' at Hove, Sussex in the early 20th Century. Arranged by period with a 'Jacobean Room', a 'Chippendale Room' and a 'Queen Anne Room', the 'Museum' exhibited a wide range of the arts dating from antiquity to the 18th Century. A subscriber to publications such as F. Lenygon's Furniture in England, London, 1914, his celebrated collection of furniture, tapestries and needlework was published by Percy Macquoid in a series of articles in Country Life, 1918. His 'museum' at No. 1 Grand Avenue was sold by Messrs Puttick & Simpson on the 6th-10th July 1925.
The collection formed by Percival D. Griffiths under the wise counsel of R. W. Symonds is considered to be arguably the greatest collection of English Furniture formed this Century. Indeed, it was Griffiths' collection that provided the content for Symond's seminal work English Furniture from Charles II to George II. The interiors at Sandridgebury are happily recalled in 'Percival Griffiths F. S. A.; a memoir on a great collector of English Furniture', published by Symonds in the Antique Collector of November-December 1943, pp. 163-9.
In form, this ratchet-back chair is inspired by the 'sleeping chairs' of the 17th Century, such as that supplied to John Maitland, Duke of Lauderdale (1682) for Ham House, Surrey and illustrated in S.C. Hall's, Baronial Halls of England, 1848 (M. Tomlin, Ham House, London, 1986, p. 101).
However, with its 'moreen' covered back and hooks to the back seat-rail, it is similarly upholstered to much of the contemporary seat-furniture supplied to Sir Robert Walpole (d.1745) for Houghton Hall, Norfolk. The original needlework of this wing armchair has, however, been reattached and restuffed since the 1929 publication of English Furniture from Charles II to George II, and originally had needlework sides, which are just visible in the 1918 Country Life illustration which has resulted in some further nail-holes to the front seat-rail.
The collection formed by Percival D. Griffiths under the wise counsel of R. W. Symonds is considered to be arguably the greatest collection of English Furniture formed this Century. Indeed, it was Griffiths' collection that provided the content for Symond's seminal work English Furniture from Charles II to George II. The interiors at Sandridgebury are happily recalled in 'Percival Griffiths F. S. A.; a memoir on a great collector of English Furniture', published by Symonds in the Antique Collector of November-December 1943, pp. 163-9.
In form, this ratchet-back chair is inspired by the 'sleeping chairs' of the 17th Century, such as that supplied to John Maitland, Duke of Lauderdale (1682) for Ham House, Surrey and illustrated in S.C. Hall's, Baronial Halls of England, 1848 (M. Tomlin, Ham House, London, 1986, p. 101).
However, with its 'moreen' covered back and hooks to the back seat-rail, it is similarly upholstered to much of the contemporary seat-furniture supplied to Sir Robert Walpole (d.1745) for Houghton Hall, Norfolk. The original needlework of this wing armchair has, however, been reattached and restuffed since the 1929 publication of English Furniture from Charles II to George II, and originally had needlework sides, which are just visible in the 1918 Country Life illustration which has resulted in some further nail-holes to the front seat-rail.