AFTER A DESIGN BY ROBERT MANWARING, CIRCA 1765

A related 'Gothic' fretted parlour chair was invented for the author and antiquarian, Horace Walpole's castellated villa, Strawberry Hill in 1754 and in the same year Thomas Chippendale issued related patterns for 'Chinese' railed chairs in The Gentleman and Cabinet-Maker's Director, pl.XXIII. The third edition of his Director, published in 1762, featured a 'Gothick' style chair with a similar cusped 'rose' and noted that it would be 'proper for a library'. These chairs, with their cluster pillars and 'rose'-windowed back, correspond more closely to patterns for 'Gothick' dining-room chairs issued by the Haymarket cabinet-maker Robert Manwaring in The Cabinet and Chair-Maker's Real Friend and Companion, 1765 (pl.15). Another of his patterns with a medallion-centred back features in the London Society of Upholders' Genteel Household Furniture in the Present Taste, 1760, pl.15.

A similar chair with different motifs within the arm design was sold by the Executors of the late Mrs. D. Upholin, Christie's London, 26 February 1981, lot 60. Another closely related was sold, the Property of a Gentleman, Christie's London, 14 June 2001, lot 29 (£16,450). A set of eight, including two armchairs, with the same quatrefoil paneled frame was sold by Mr. and Mrs. Donald Davies, Charleville, Enniskerry, Co.Wicklow, Ireland, Christie's house sale, 23 January 1978, lot 97 (illustrated in situ at Charleville in D. Guiness and W. Ryan, Irish Houses and Castles, New York, 1971, p.311).