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Lot Essay
These elegant chairs, with shell-capped knees and cresting rails and distinctive acanthus fronds connecting back splat to uprights, are amongst a group of chairs that has been identified with the celebrated Clerkenwell cabinet-maker and 'great Dealer in the Cabinet way', Giles Grendey (d. 1780). Grendey’s trade label has been recorded on a set of twelve chairs with related backs, inverted shells and shell-capped legs terminating in ‘Jupiter’ eagle-claws; these also bear journeymen’s initials (C. Gilbert, Pictorial Dictionary of Marked London Furniture, Leeds, 1996, pp. 31-2, fig. 435). Grendey's business was prolific and there is an identifiable group of this model with minor variations in the carved details which includes: a pair formerly in the collection of Augustine Earle (d. 1762), Heydon Hall, Norfolk, sold anonymously, Christie’s, London, 7 June 2007, lot 70 (£90,000); a pair offered by Theodore and Ruth Baum, Sotheby's New York, 22 October 2004, lot 407 (previously sold, Christie's, London, 16 November 1995, lot 50, £73,000); and another pair, almost certainly from the same set as the Baum chairs, sold by the Trustees of the S.T. Cook Will Trust, Sotheby's, New York, 16 October 1993, lot 347 ($151,000).
Chairs with related shaped splats also centred by bas-relief shells were in the collection of Percival D. Griffiths, F.S.A., at Sandridgebury, Kent and were illustrated in R.W. Symonds, English Furniture from Charles II to George II, London, 1929, p. 45, fig. 23. A closely-related chair almost certainly by Grendey and also covered in similar contemporary needlework, though with inset tablet to the cresting rail and shallower seatrails, was sold Christie’s, New York, 11 June 2010, lot 221 ($40,000).
Taking into account the variations in the design and quality of the carving amongst the known examples, it is also possible that some may have been produced by workshops other than Grendey’s. Indeed, the 1740s trade-label of Landall & Gordon, of Little Argyle Street, featured on a parlour chair of this general form with a related shaped splat with clasps joining to the uprights (C. Gilbert & T. Murdoch, John Channon & brass-inlaid Furniture, New Haven and London, 1993, p. 20, fig. 12).
Chairs with related shaped splats also centred by bas-relief shells were in the collection of Percival D. Griffiths, F.S.A., at Sandridgebury, Kent and were illustrated in R.W. Symonds, English Furniture from Charles II to George II, London, 1929, p. 45, fig. 23. A closely-related chair almost certainly by Grendey and also covered in similar contemporary needlework, though with inset tablet to the cresting rail and shallower seatrails, was sold Christie’s, New York, 11 June 2010, lot 221 ($40,000).
Taking into account the variations in the design and quality of the carving amongst the known examples, it is also possible that some may have been produced by workshops other than Grendey’s. Indeed, the 1740s trade-label of Landall & Gordon, of Little Argyle Street, featured on a parlour chair of this general form with a related shaped splat with clasps joining to the uprights (C. Gilbert & T. Murdoch, John Channon & brass-inlaid Furniture, New Haven and London, 1993, p. 20, fig. 12).