THE WELLER-POLEY SUITE
By Anthony Coleridge
This suite is a most remarkable survival. It consists of a pair of card-tables, four rectangular stools and sixteen mahogany dining or 'parlour chairs', as Ince and Mayhew and Thomas Manwaring described them in their design books. The survival of such a suite of seat-furniture and card-tables is a great rarity and the only similar suite known to us formed part of the Powell heirlooms. 1
Who ordered this marvellous suite? Assuming that it has remained at Boxted Hall, Bury St. Edmunds in Suffolk, since it was made in about 1760, then it would have been supplied to George Weller-Poley. George, the only son of Elizabeth Poley of Boxted Hall and Robert Weller of Tunbridge in Kent, inherited the estate at the age of 41, on his father's death in 1751. He appears to have taken every advantage of his inheritance and two letters bear witness to this. The first,2 dated 5 November 1757, is to George from a Mr. Nelthorpe who writes 'However I am glad that you have the whole estate at last. I wish you a succession of many happy years to enjoy it after you have made it compleat and elegant in every part'. The second, 3 dated 8 September 1767, by which time the work must have been completed, was written by a kinsman William Croftes and includes the following 'I have the misfortune to be deprived of the use of my limbs by hereditary gout that will not permit me to make any visits, or I should most certainly have paid my respects to you at Boxted, and it would have given me a double pleasure in waiting upon you at a place, where in my younger days, I had been so kindly and hospitably received and which my worthy good friend Mr. Elwes has told me is so much improved by your elegant taste'.
The family papers yield no clue and no inventory of the period is extant. Family tradition holds that the suite has been at Boxted Hall for many generations and given that George Weller-Poley almost certainly ordered the suite, from whom did he buy it? There is no sign of a cabinet-maker's invoice or an account book entry relating to the suite. We must, therefore, fall back onto stylistic comparison with published mid-18th Century designs, for although firm conclusions cannot be drawn from an exercise such as this, the stylistic test can often supply reliable evidence.
However, let us pause for a moment here and consider the upper echelons of the cabinet-making trade in London during the middle years of the 18th Century. The various firms were clustered together in, and around, St. Martin's Lane. Many of the proprietors had been taught at the same drawing schools, such as the St. Martin's Lane Academy founded by Hogarth, and they exchanged ideas and drank coffee, and probably stronger beverages, together at The Old Slaughter Coffee House and other social meeting places. The specialist journeymen, who actually made the pieces, moved freely from one master to another, all breathing the same air, artistically as well as literally, and the rivalry was healthily intense. They lived in each other's pockets and cribbed designs from one another. The cabinet-maker William Ince, for example, was a subscriber to Thomas Chippendale's design book The Gentleman and Cabinet-Maker's Director.
It is from this ever-changing scene that we must try and choose who was responsible for supplying this extrordinary suite. It is highly sophisticated in design and the quality of its carving is supreme. Made from carefully chosen mahogany of excellent grain, colour and patina, it has hardly been touched since it left the workshop. It was patently made by a major London cabinet-maker between 1755 and 1765, but which one?
From study of designs it appears to be a three-horse race, the starters being Thomas Chippendale, Robert Manwaring and the partnership of William Ince and John Mayhew. It has already been stressed how unusual it is to find chairs and stools with matching card-tables. The chairs demonstrate a rare mix of design and decorative detail. They have 'French Rococo' splats of interlaced arcaded form and square legs carved with bells, fret, rosettes and stylised foliage and scrolls. The stools and tables have similarly carved legs. The stretchers of the chairs and stools are most unusual and are of angled faceted and squared form. There are four upholstered library armchairs of similar date at Longford Castle with identical stretchers although it has not proved possible to find who supplied these chairs.4 The card-tables, which have plain friezes, open with concertina actions to reveal iron hinges which are stamped 'H. Tibats'.5
Thomas Chippendale of St. Martin's Lane, the first entry in our race, published designs for New Pattern Chairs, in plates IX and XII of the 1754 first edition of his Director and the splats of the Weller-Poley chairs should be compared with these designs. However, of the six chairs illustrated in these two plates, four have cabriole legs and only two have square legs with carved ornament and only one has a stretcher. Chippendale does not mix Chinese ornament with chairs of this form and design. There is a set of mahogany ' parlour' chairs at Nostell Priory, Yorkshire, with similar backs and plain square legs, which were possibly supplied by Chippendale, otherwise no sets of chairs of this form from his Director period are known to be extant.
The second contender is Robert Manwaring of the Haymarket. In 1765 he published The Cabinet and Chair-Maker's Real Friend and Companion and plate IV illustrates a design for a 'parlour' chair with a splat and toprail in the same tradition as those on the Weller-Poley chairs: it shows a square leg with a bell carved to the intersection with the seat-rail and has carved ornament below the bell, although not of Chinoiserie fret design. Plate XII shows designs for two 'Chinese Chairs', one of which has Chinese fret carved legs, the other again being carved with bells to the upper sections of the square legs. These are the only known chair designs of the period with bells on the legs. The bells carved on the legs of the Weller-Poley suite are thus extremely rare. No documented pieces of furniture by Manwaring are recorded, whether chairs or anything else, although he claimed that his designs 'are actually Originals, and not pirated or copied', adding 'there are very few designs advanced, but what he has either executed himself, or seem completely finished by others'. Manwaring alone, designed a rectangular stool with a Chinese fret leg which can be compared with the Weller-Poley examples. He also included two designs for card-tables, although neither are in the Chinese taste.
The final runner is the partnership of Ince and Mayhew, and for me, the winners. In 1762 they published their Universal System of Household Furniture which included two plates of designs for 'Parlour Chairs', plates IX and X. The former described as 'four Designs for Parlour Chairs, with different patterns for legs' includes one of a chair, again with comparable splat and toprail, and with square carved legs which are united by pierced shaped stretchers. The Univeral System also includes a plate showing designs for card-tables, one of which is carved with variations of Chinoiserie fret ornament.
Ince and Mayhew formed a major partnership with large premises in Broad Street off Golden Square. Their client base vied with that of Chippendale and, although no documented set of Rococo period 'parlour chairs' are to date recorded, the Weller-Poley Suite is much in the idiom of what has become associated with the output of their workshop at this date. However, in the final analysis, all that really matters is that, whoever made it, and we favour Ince and Mayhew, the Weller-Poley suite is a remarkably beautiful set.
NOTES
1. The English Chair, M. Harris & Sons, London, 1946, p. 129, plate LVII. The suite from Bylands House, Clapton, Somerset.
2. Weller-Poley archives, Suffolk Record Office, Bury St. Edmunds, HA519/204.
3. Weller-Poley archives, op. cit., HA519/189.
4. I am most grateful to the Earl of Radnor and Viscount Folkestone for their permission to examine and discuss these chairs.
5. H. Tibats was an important maker of iron fittings for furniture (flourished 1745-75), see P. Thornton, A Signed Hinge, Furniture History, 1966, pp. 44-45.
THE PROPERTY OF THE TRUSTEES OF THE J. H. WELLER-POLEY WILL TRUST
(Lots 20-23)
A SET OF SIXTEEN EARLY GEORGE III MAHOGANY DINING-CHAIRS
IN THE MANNER OF MAYHEW AND INCE
Details
A SET OF SIXTEEN EARLY GEORGE III MAHOGANY DINING-CHAIRS
In the manner of Mayhew and Ince
Each with a waved toprail carved with acanthus, the pierced Gothic splat carved with foliage and rockwork between moulded stiles, the padded seat covered in close-nailed red velvet and edged with beading, the panelled square chamfered legs filled with fret carving of bells and rosettes, on block feet, joined by square and faceted stretchers, previously with pierced angle-brackets, minor restorations
toprail: 21 in. (53.5 cm.) wide; seat: 23 in. (58.5 cm.) wide, at front; 36½ in. (93 cm.) high, overall; seat: 18½ in. (47 cm.) high (16)
In the manner of Mayhew and Ince
Each with a waved toprail carved with acanthus, the pierced Gothic splat carved with foliage and rockwork between moulded stiles, the padded seat covered in close-nailed red velvet and edged with beading, the panelled square chamfered legs filled with fret carving of bells and rosettes, on block feet, joined by square and faceted stretchers, previously with pierced angle-brackets, minor restorations
toprail: 21 in. (53.5 cm.) wide; seat: 23 in. (58.5 cm.) wide, at front; 36½ in. (93 cm.) high, overall; seat: 18½ in. (47 cm.) high (16)
Provenance
Almost certainly supplied to George Weller-Poley Esq., Boxted Hall, Bury St. Edmunds, Suffolk.
Thence by descent.
Thence by descent.