CIRCA 1805, POSSIBLY NORTH EUROPEAN

The scrolled seat is designed in the French/antique fashion introduced by C. Percier and P.F.L.Fontaine's, Recueil de Décorations Intérieures, Paris, 1802, and popularised in London by the connoisseur Thomas Hope's guide to his Duchess Street mansion museum entitled, Household Furniture and Interior Decoration, 1807. The present stool, with mythical Apollo eagle griffin heads and triumphal arched columnar legs tied by palm-flowered ribbons and terminating in paw feet derives from the "Recueils Tabouret en X pattern" (pl.39, no.5), and this also inspired a Drawing Room X Seat pattern, with lion paw feet and arms terminating in palm-wrapped trusses, that George Smith issued in his Collection of Designs for Household Furniture and Interior decoration, 1808 (pl.53).