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Lot Essay
This beautiful pair of chairs, painted greyish-white in imitation of stone and with highlights picked out in gold, are part of a set of at least five chairs whose origin remains a mystery. A further pair of chairs is in the Gerstenfeld Collection, having been acquired from Simon Redburn in 1981 and later exhibited by Fleming & Meers in Washington in 1985 (E. Lennox-Boyd, op. cit., p. 43, fig. 28 and p. 218, no. 51); whilst a single chair is in a private collection in New York.
These chairs are fantasies of chinoiserie trelliswork and epitomize the ‘Chinese’ taste which became popular from the second half of the 18th century. Promoted by William Chambers' Designs of Chinese Buildings (1757) and Charles Over's Ornamental Architecture in the Gothic, Chinese and Modern Taste (1758), the overwhelming interest in chinoiserie was espoused by Thomas Chippendale (d. 1779) in his Cabinet Maker’s Director, published in 1754, in particular his designs for Chinese lattice-style chair backs with straight legs noted as ‘…very proper for a Lady’s Dressing Room: especially if it is hung with India [Chinese] paper’ (Director, 3rd ed., 1762, pls. XXV and XXVII).
The pierced back and sides are echoed in the blind-fretwork of the seat rails and legs, with the pattern of the latter also featuring in Chippendale’s design for a coffer, whilst the padded oval of the back, which was originally tufted, surrounded by paling can be related to his design for a fire screen featuring a chinoiserie scene to the center.
Chippendale was by no means the only exponent of the fashionable taste for all things Chinese, with his contemporary John Linnell at the vanguard of the trend, having supplied the celebrated suite of furniture to the Duke of Beaufort at Badminton in the same year that Chippendale published his first edition of the Director. A pair of chairs from the Badminton suite is in the Ann & Gordon Getty Collection (see lot 20 in the Evening Sale).
These chairs are fantasies of chinoiserie trelliswork and epitomize the ‘Chinese’ taste which became popular from the second half of the 18th century. Promoted by William Chambers' Designs of Chinese Buildings (1757) and Charles Over's Ornamental Architecture in the Gothic, Chinese and Modern Taste (1758), the overwhelming interest in chinoiserie was espoused by Thomas Chippendale (d. 1779) in his Cabinet Maker’s Director, published in 1754, in particular his designs for Chinese lattice-style chair backs with straight legs noted as ‘…very proper for a Lady’s Dressing Room: especially if it is hung with India [Chinese] paper’ (Director, 3rd ed., 1762, pls. XXV and XXVII).
The pierced back and sides are echoed in the blind-fretwork of the seat rails and legs, with the pattern of the latter also featuring in Chippendale’s design for a coffer, whilst the padded oval of the back, which was originally tufted, surrounded by paling can be related to his design for a fire screen featuring a chinoiserie scene to the center.
Chippendale was by no means the only exponent of the fashionable taste for all things Chinese, with his contemporary John Linnell at the vanguard of the trend, having supplied the celebrated suite of furniture to the Duke of Beaufort at Badminton in the same year that Chippendale published his first edition of the Director. A pair of chairs from the Badminton suite is in the Ann & Gordon Getty Collection (see lot 20 in the Evening Sale).