Lot Essay
This chair corresponds to the well-known set thought to have been supplied by Giles Grendey for Henry Hoare at Stourhead, Wiltshire and illustrated in P. Macquoid and R. Edwards, The Dictionary of English Furniture, 1954, vol. I, p.275, fig.154. A virtually identical chair to the present example was sold Christie’s, New York, 17 October 2008, lot 56 ($134,500), while another similar pair with parcel gilding was sold from the Estate of Halstead B. Vander Poel, Christie's, New York, 8 April 2004, lot 165 ($83,650). As with the offered lot, those chairs were also inscribed or incised `TT’, which is possibly for one of Grendey’s journeymen, who often stamped their work.