A PAIR OF REGENCY MAHOGANY BERGERES

The Property of MRS. R.D. SHAFTO Furniture supplied by Gillows for Beamish Park, Co. Durham (Lots 140-178) The following thirty-nine lots are from Bavington Hall, Northumberland. This house was begun by the Shafto family in the late 17th Century but completed by Vanburgh's client Admiral Delaval, famous for Seaton Delaval. In this century the Shafto family returned to Bavington when they left Beamish Park, Co. Durham. Beamish had been inherited by a branch of the Shafto family of Whitworth Park, Co. Durham, in 1844. It had been held by the Eden and Davison families until 1844 when it passed to Thomas Duncombe Shafto. Two generations of the Shafto family changed their name to Eden until 1904 when the house and estate passed to Slingsby Duncombe Shafto. The Gillow furniture is likely to have been supplied to Morton John Eden (subsequently Davison, who died 1841) soon after he inherited the house and estate in 1812. He completely remodelled the house from 1813 and the style of the Gillow furniture suggests that it was acquired after that. One of the serving-tables, in lot 176, has 1816 painted on its underside in a thin wash. This may well be a date of manufacture. The Gillow furniture is recorded in an inventory of Beamish Hall drawn up in 1913. There remains the tantalising possibility that the main sideboard (lot 172), which alone is stamped by Gillows, was acquired from another house. It is of the same model as a pair supplied to Parlington Hall of which only one is known. They were both sold in a dispersal at Parlington early this century and this may possibly be the second

Details

A PAIR OF REGENCY MAHOGANY BERGERES
ATTRIBUTED TO GILLOWS OF LANCASTER

The reeded and caned frame with padded arms and squab cushion upholstered in stylised flower-patterned cotton, the ring-turned baluster supports above conforming legs and brass castors, one side with signs of a previous fitting, each with green velvet-covered back cushion (2)

Provenance

Probably supplied to Morton John Davison, Esq. (1778-1841), for Beamish Park, Co. Durham
Thence by indirect descent with the house to Robert Duncombe Shafto Esq., of Beamish Park and subsequently of Bavington Hall

Lot Essay

The caned bergere of this form, named the 'Ashburnham' chair, features in Gillows' 1803 Estimate Sketch Book, no. 1721 (Westminster Public Library). Sketches of similar chairs appear in the firm's early 19th Century room plans preserved at the Victoria and Albert Museum. Its baluster arm evolved from a chair pattern illustrated in Thomas Sheraton's Cabinet-Maker and Upholsterer's Drawing Book, 1793, p. VI, and its reeded back and bead-edged tablets reflect Gillows' early 19th Century Grecian style.The invention of such 'Library Reading Chairs' with book-rest fitments was credited to Morgan and Sanders of the Strand when illustrated in the September 1810 edition of R. Ackermann's Repository of Arts. One such chair, reputed to have belonged to Admiral Sir Thomas Hardy, was sold in these Rooms, 27 February 1992, lot 58

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