SIX GEORGE III, A PAIR OF OPEN ARMCHAIRS 20TH CENTURY AND A SET OF SIX CHAIRS, LATE 20TH CENTURY

This parlour chair, with columnar back, Roman-tripod splat and reed enriched leg, is likely to have been invented by the architect Sir John Soane (d. 1837), around the time of his appointment as 'Architect' to the Bank of England in 1788. Related chairs are preserved at the Bank of England (see R. Edwards, The Shorter Dictionary of English Furniture, London, 1964, p. 162, fig. 185 and M. Richardson and M. Stevens, John Soane Architect, London, 1999, fig. 77). Soane adopted the pattern for his own parlour chairs, which may have been made for his Welbeck Street house, before being removed to his Lincoln's Inn Fields mansion in the 1790s. A pattern for a related back was published in Thomas Sheraton's The Cabinet-Maker and Upholsterer's Drawing-Book 1791-94, London, p. 42.
A similar set of chairs was sold anonymously, Sotheby's New York, 16 and 17 April 1993, lot 473.