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Lot Essay
This set of white and green-painted and parcel-gilt armchairs is attributed to Gillows of Lancaster and London based on sets of chairs either by, or ascribed to, the firm, and illustrated in Susan Stuart’s Gillows of Lancaster and London 1730-1840, Woodbridge, 2008 (see p. 171, plate 131; p. 182, plate 148). The arms of a gilded armchair, circa 1775-85, attributed to the firm, run similarly into the chair leg and feature closely related carved ornamentation of stiff-leaf collars, rosette blocks and fluted legs that terminate in comparable feet. Stuart notes that the ‘turned and fluted legs with carved capitals… [are] all Gillows features’ (ibid.).
Another set of four armchairs with shield backs, one of which has a pencil inscription ‘R. Gillow’ also has virtually identical chair legs (ibid., p. 181, plate 147, sold Christie’s, New York, 22 April 1999, lot 76); a design for this chair type made for Robert Wheel in October 1786 is included in the Estimate Sketch Books, and illustrated in Stuart (ibid., p. 181, plate 146).
While Gillows are celebrated for their mahogany furniture, in response to fashionable taste in the late eighteenth / early nineteenth centuries they were also producing painted and parcel gilt seat furniture including the fourteen ‘white and burnished gold’ chairs purchased by William Blathwayt in 1802, and now at Dyrham Park, Wiltshire (ibid., p. 193, plate 163).
Another set of four armchairs with shield backs, one of which has a pencil inscription ‘R. Gillow’ also has virtually identical chair legs (ibid., p. 181, plate 147, sold Christie’s, New York, 22 April 1999, lot 76); a design for this chair type made for Robert Wheel in October 1786 is included in the Estimate Sketch Books, and illustrated in Stuart (ibid., p. 181, plate 146).
While Gillows are celebrated for their mahogany furniture, in response to fashionable taste in the late eighteenth / early nineteenth centuries they were also producing painted and parcel gilt seat furniture including the fourteen ‘white and burnished gold’ chairs purchased by William Blathwayt in 1802, and now at Dyrham Park, Wiltshire (ibid., p. 193, plate 163).