a set of ten Russian ebonised and brass dining-chairs

SIX SIDE CHAIRS EARLY 19TH CENTURY, TOGETHER WITH A PAIR OF OPEN ARMCHAIRS AND A PAIR OF SIDE CHAIRS OF LATER DATE

Details

a set of ten Russian ebonised and brass dining-chairs
Six side chairs early 19th Century, together with a pair of open armchairs and a pair of side chairs of later date
Including a pair of open armchairs, each with curved tablet toprail above a pierced back with urn-shaped splat cast with oak-leaves and flanked by scrolling serpent handles, the close-nailed seat and buttoned squab-cushion covered in green velvet, on sabre legs terminating in paw feet, possibly Austrian, redecorated (10)

Lot Essay

Conceived in the French early 19th Century `antique' manner, recalling the Roman concept `Sine Cerere et Baccho friget Venus', this Grecian-scrolled and `Etruscan' black parlour-chair has bacchic lion-paw feet, while Jupiter's acorns embellish its composite capitals and vase-shaped splat with serpents guarding Ceres's sacred poppy. The splats of related chairs, supplied in the early 19th Century to the Taurischen Palace in St. Petersburg, feature Venus's embowed dolphins attending a reed-filled vase. (J. Schultze (ed.), St. Petersburg um 1800, Recklinghausen, 1990, p. 427, no. 387)

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