A PAIR OF ANGLO-INDIAN EBONY DAYBEDS
A PAIR OF ANGLO-INDIAN EBONY DAYBEDS

EARLY 19TH CENTURY

Details
A PAIR OF ANGLO-INDIAN EBONY DAYBEDS
Early 19th Century
Each with a panelled padded headboard, back, foot-end and cushion covered in red silk-damask, with scrolling foliage toprails, the head-end with a foliage-carved tablet, flanked by foliage scrolls, the sides with reeded and foliage-clasped baluster columns above a fluted seat-rail intersperced with square patera panels, on reeded baluster legs with foliage collars, lacquered brass caps and castors, minor losses, later blocks, one daybed re-railed
38 in. (97 cm.) high; 76 in. (193 cm.) wide; 32 in. (82.5 cm.) deep (2)
Provenance
Supplied to Sir Henry Russell, 2nd Bt. (d. 1852), Resident of Hyderabad, for the British Residency, Hyderabad, India, and later moved to Swallowfield Park, Reading.
Thence by descent at Swallowfield.
Literature
Lady (Constance) Russell, Swallowfield and Its Owners, London, 1901, p. 302, illustrated in situ.

Lot Essay

The Grecian sofas, with Ionic-scrolled and columnar-supported ends and flowered and fluted enrichments, relate to the early 19th Century French/antique style promoted by Thomas Sheraton's The Cabinet Dictionary, London, 1803. The Grecian sofas, supplied en suite with a large sofa and pair of bergere chairs with multi-columned arm-supports, are likely to have been commissioned by Mr. Russell, later Sir Henry Russell, 2nd Baronet (d. 1852) for the 'magnificent' British Residency, which he occupied as Resident of Hyderabad from 1810. In 1816 he married Marie-Clotilde, daughter of Baron Benot Mottet de la Fontaine, the last Governor of Pondicherry, and the grand suite of ebony furniture is likely to have accompanied their return to England in 1821. The suite furnished the drawing-room and library of Swallowfield Park, which had been remodelled by William Atkinson (d. 1839) in the mid-1820s, and is illustrated in situ in Lady (Constance) Russell, Swallowfield and Its Owners, London, 1901, p. 302.

Sir Henry Russell's father, also Sir Henry and the 1st Baronet (d. 1836) had bought Swallowfield Park in 1820 on his return from India. He had been Chief Justice of Bengal, and soon after his return travelled to St. Helena where he visited Napoleon's house, New Longwood. It was the first Sir Henry who employed William Atkinson to remodel Swallowfield and it is possible that he commissioned this pair of daybeds while out in India, rather than his son.

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