A REGENCY STYLE PARCEL-GILT AND EBONIZED SETTEE

AFTER A DESIGN BY GEORGE SMITH

Details

A REGENCY STYLE PARCEL-GILT AND EBONIZED SETTEE
After A Design By George Smith
The curved back with three panels carved with masks and foliate scrolls over spindles, with caned sides and seat over a star-studded seatrail on lion monopodia supports, now with silk striped cushion
66in. (167.5 cm.) wide

Provenance

Anonymous sale, Sotheby's London, 17 November 1989, lot 120

Lot Essay

This settee follows a design for a 'drawing room chair' published by George Smith in his A Collection of Designs for Household Furniture of 1808, pl. 56. Many of the motifs employed in this design, such as the lion monopodia, are taken directly from Thomas Hope's Household Furniture and Interior Decoration, 1804, and the star-studded seat-rail derives from Hope and Percier and Fontaine's Recueil des Décorations Intérieures of 1801 (G. Jackson-Stops, ed., The Treasure Houses of Britain, 1985, no. 526, p. 591).
A large set of Regency period bergeres of the same design probably made for Leigh Court, Bristol, is now dispersed with examples in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, and The Royal Pavilion at Brighton (see: M. Jourdain, Regency Furniture, rev. ed., London, 1965, p. 50, fig. 81).