FIRST HALF 19TH CENTURY

From the mid-18th Century, antiquarian connoisseurs such as Horace Walpole prized such richly-flowered and spindle-columned ebony furniture as exemplars of the Tudor and Elizabethan styles, and a related seat served as King George III's throne for his 1789 visit to ancient Cothele in Cornwall. A related 'Ashmole' chair, displayed at Oxford from the 17th Century, was illustrated in Henry Shaw's Speciments of Ancient Furniture, 1836. This settee features spirally-reeded arms and legs in the style fashionable around 1800. However its India-flowered back corresponds to that of a chair, which was associated with Cardinal Wolsey when acquired by the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, in 1882, and has since been identified with chairs sold from William Beckford's collection at Fonthill Abbey in 1823 (C. Wainwright, 'Only the True Black Blood', Furniture History, 1985, pp. 250-254 and figs. 3,2 and 1).
Four related sofas and a pair of chairs were supplied in December 1827 by the dealer E.H. Baldock to George IV (G. de Bellaigue, 'Edward Holmes Baldock', The Connoisseur, August 1975, p. 298, fig. 10).