ATTRIBUTED TO WILLIAM HALLETT

This armchair belongs to a suite of seat furniture, with serpentined legs embellished with husk-enriched Venus-shells and terminating in ringed eagle-claws, that corresponds to a walnut suite supplied by William Hallett (d. 1781) of Long Acre in 1735 for the London house of Arthur Ingram, 6th Viscount Irwin (d. 1736) and later removed to Temple Newsam House, Yorkshire. The bill for the Irwin suite was submitted by Hallett in August 1735, the eighteen chairs costing 20 14 0, and the two sofas, 4 18 0. The suite was sold anonymously, in these Rooms, 29 June 1978, lot 19 (C. Gilbert, 'Newly Discovered Furniture by William Hallett', The Connoisseur, December 1964, pp. 224-225). A chair with the same patterned feet was acquired by the Victoria and Albert Museum in 1898 (R. Edwards, A History of the English Chair, London, 1951, no. 58). The early 18th Century French needlework, with colourful acanthus-wrapped and ribboned arabesques woven on a golden ground, displays cartouches of flowered brackets and fanciful Orientals engaged in weaving; while the seat cartouche displays an auspicious vignette of an umbrello'd and dragon-guarded tazza of fruit. The scenes relate to Chinese woodblock prints or porcelain ornament of the Kangxi period (1662-1722). Similar Chinoiserie cartouches appear on a set of mid-18th Century French giltwood fauteuils by Pierre Bara, in the Drawing Room at Scone Palace, illustrated in Scone Palace, Guide Book. One of the seat backs displays Chinese acrobats and another has astronomers flanking a globe wearing costumes and feathered hats and the seats have dragon cartouches. The needlework is attributed to the workshop of the tapissier Planqu at St. Cyr.