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Lot Essay
The window seat bears characteristic design features of Seddon, Sons & Shackleton of Aldersgate Street, London, and relates closely to three 'French Stools' with caned seats and loose cushions that formed part of a set of seat-furniture, also including a '5-back Settee', eighteen satinwood elbow chairs and two fire screens, supplied by the partnership to D. Tupper Esq. of Hauteville House, Guernsey in 1790, and remaining there until 1928 (E.F. Strange, 'Seddon Furniture', Old Furniture, vol. 5, September-December 1928, pp. 118-120). Described as 'neatly Japanned-ornamented with roses in back and peacock feather border', each window seat was charged in the firm's bill at £5 15s 6d. A window seat resembling those from the set was sold at Christie's (Apollo, December 1960, p. 225, figs. a and b). Two of the window seats from the set were illustrated in A Catalogue and Index of Old Furniture and Works of Decorative Art, M. Harris & Sons, Part III, p. 377, and a chair from the same set is in the Victoria & Albert Museum (W.2:1-1968), illustrated in Ralph Edwards, English Chairs, London, 1965, pl.104.
A window seat resembling those from the set was sold at Christie's (Apollo, December 1960, p. 225, figs. a and b). A pair of closely related armchairs was sold anonymously Christie's, New York, 7 April 2006, lot 208 ($18,000 including premium).
Another house associated with peacock-feather decorated furniture is Daylesford, Gloucestershire. A Louis XVI style bed with frame and columnar pillars wreathed by 'Juno' peacock feathers was commissioned circa 1790 from the Soho firm of John Mayhew and William Ince by Warren Hastings (d.1818), the celebrated statesman and former Governor-General of Bengal. At the 1853 Daylesford sale, held on the death of Warren Hastings's step-son, Sir Charles Imhoff, the Hastings 'peacock' bed (lot 321) was purchased, together with other 'Peacock' furnishings from the Peacock Room at Daylesford, by the Wardour Street dealer Louis Nathan and acquired for Sandon Park (L. Boynton, 'The Furniture of Warren Hastings', Burlington Magazine, August 1970, pp. 509-520).
SEDDON, SONS AND SHACKLETON
The cabinet-making firm established by George Seddon in the early 1750s was a prolific one. An entry in the Gentleman's Magazine of 1768 notes a fire on the premises of Mr. Seddon, 'one of the most eminent cabinet-makers in London', which resulted in £20,000 in damages; in 1783 another fire destroyed an enormous £100,000 in property. By 1786, a German novelist Sophie von La Roche noted in her travel journal that the firm employed over 400 apprentices including glass-grinders, bronze-casters, carvers, gilders, painters, drapers and upholsterers, all of whom worked at the Aldersgate Street premises. A study of the printed bill-heads for the firm reveal the times when sons Thomas and George officially joined the company. Thomas Shackleton, who married the eldest daughter in 1790, was invited to join the firm in that same year. The partnership lasted until the father retired in 1798 and the sons assumed control of the business.
A window seat resembling those from the set was sold at Christie's (Apollo, December 1960, p. 225, figs. a and b). A pair of closely related armchairs was sold anonymously Christie's, New York, 7 April 2006, lot 208 ($18,000 including premium).
Another house associated with peacock-feather decorated furniture is Daylesford, Gloucestershire. A Louis XVI style bed with frame and columnar pillars wreathed by 'Juno' peacock feathers was commissioned circa 1790 from the Soho firm of John Mayhew and William Ince by Warren Hastings (d.1818), the celebrated statesman and former Governor-General of Bengal. At the 1853 Daylesford sale, held on the death of Warren Hastings's step-son, Sir Charles Imhoff, the Hastings 'peacock' bed (lot 321) was purchased, together with other 'Peacock' furnishings from the Peacock Room at Daylesford, by the Wardour Street dealer Louis Nathan and acquired for Sandon Park (L. Boynton, 'The Furniture of Warren Hastings', Burlington Magazine, August 1970, pp. 509-520).
SEDDON, SONS AND SHACKLETON
The cabinet-making firm established by George Seddon in the early 1750s was a prolific one. An entry in the Gentleman's Magazine of 1768 notes a fire on the premises of Mr. Seddon, 'one of the most eminent cabinet-makers in London', which resulted in £20,000 in damages; in 1783 another fire destroyed an enormous £100,000 in property. By 1786, a German novelist Sophie von La Roche noted in her travel journal that the firm employed over 400 apprentices including glass-grinders, bronze-casters, carvers, gilders, painters, drapers and upholsterers, all of whom worked at the Aldersgate Street premises. A study of the printed bill-heads for the firm reveal the times when sons Thomas and George officially joined the company. Thomas Shackleton, who married the eldest daughter in 1790, was invited to join the firm in that same year. The partnership lasted until the father retired in 1798 and the sons assumed control of the business.