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Lot Essay
With their solid padouk rails and legs, sparse raised foliate tendril carving and slightly broader profile of the scroll feet, these chairs clearly reflect the influence of Chinese Export furniture executed in Canton in the first half of the 18th Century, which is discussed by C. Crossman in The China Trade, Woodbridge, 1991. Their beech inner seat-rails and lack of pegged construction, however, indicates that they were almost certainly executed - or at the very least assembled - by a chairmaker in England.
Whilst no direct parallels have so far come to light, raised foliate tendril carving of somewhat similar character is certainly seen on English furniture of the mid-18th Century, as can be seen, for instance, on the celebrated suite of seat-furniture supplied by Giles Grendey to Stourhead in 1746 (R.Dodd, Stourhead, London, 1992, p.21), as well as on the suite of seat-furniture formerly in the Viscount Leverhulme and Judge Irwin Untermyer collections, now divided between the William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art in Kansas City, the Art Institute of Chicago and a Private Collection. Eight chairs from this latter suite were sold at Christie's New York, 11 November 1971.
Whilst no direct parallels have so far come to light, raised foliate tendril carving of somewhat similar character is certainly seen on English furniture of the mid-18th Century, as can be seen, for instance, on the celebrated suite of seat-furniture supplied by Giles Grendey to Stourhead in 1746 (R.Dodd, Stourhead, London, 1992, p.21), as well as on the suite of seat-furniture formerly in the Viscount Leverhulme and Judge Irwin Untermyer collections, now divided between the William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art in Kansas City, the Art Institute of Chicago and a Private Collection. Eight chairs from this latter suite were sold at Christie's New York, 11 November 1971.