ATTRIBUTED TO FRANCOIS HERVE AND ALMOST CERTAINLY SUPPLIED BY HENRY HOLLAND, CIRCA 1791

These caned 'cabriolet' chairs à la medaillon are originally from a suite of at least seventeen. Also characteristic of Hervé's oeuvre - although the Spencer chairs display a far more developed and robust Neo-Classical vocabulary when compared with the 'Transitional' caned chairs executed for Chatsworth in 1782. Interestingly, Hervé generally confined himself to chair-frame making and sometimes caning. The actual japanning, gilding or addition of composition ornament was sub-contracted to others - Bickley's bill of 1782 to Spencer's brother-in-law, the 5th Duke of Devonshire including 'japanned seven dozen backstools cane colour' (I. Hall, 'A neoclassical episode at Chatsworth', The Burlington Magazine , vol. 122, June 1980, pp. 400-414, fig. 39).

The 'Curator' 7th Earl noted that 'many of these chairs had been put away in the stables and were gilded and covered in silk in 1877/78'.