Lot Essay
This pair of armchairs are identical (with the exception of their straight toprails) to armchairs which formed part of a suite of card-tables, and leather-upholstered seat furniture commissioned by Thomas Coke, 1st Earls of Leicester (d.1759) and supplied in 1757 by Paul Saunders (d.1771) and William Bradshaw (d.1775) of Princes Street, Hanover Square for the Sculpture Gallery of the state rooms created at Holkham Hall, Norfolk by the architect Matthew Brettingham (d.1769). The partly gilt suite appears in the Household Accounts for the week ending 11 June 1757 listed 'for 10 Elbow Chairs with carved and gilt frames and covd with blue Turkey leather £74.0.0, 2 large sophas ditto.41.18.0' (see A.Coleridge, 'Some Mid-Georgian Cabinet-Makers at Holkham', Apollo, February 1964, pp.122-123, fig.2).
The chairs correspond to 'French Easy Chairs' illustrated in Thomas Chippendale's furniture pattern books The Gentleman and Cabinet-Maker's Director, 1754-62. Their serpentine-trussed legs, which display cabochoned cartouches emerging from Roman acanthus and terminate in foliated and inward-scrolling volutes, relate in particular to a pattern that Chippendale engraved in 1759 and issued in his third edition of The Director, 1762 (pl.XXII).
The chairs correspond to 'French Easy Chairs' illustrated in Thomas Chippendale's furniture pattern books The Gentleman and Cabinet-Maker's Director, 1754-62. Their serpentine-trussed legs, which display cabochoned cartouches emerging from Roman acanthus and terminate in foliated and inward-scrolling volutes, relate in particular to a pattern that Chippendale engraved in 1759 and issued in his third edition of The Director, 1762 (pl.XXII).