Although the design and construction of this chair exhibits many of the characteristics of chairs made by Thomas Chippendale, there are a number of differences that suggest it might have been made by one of his competitors working in London at the same time. The husk-entwined and draped patera cresting is often seen as a trademark of Chippendale's work. Its best-known appearance is on the Gobelins-covered suite in the Music Room at Newby Hall, Yorkshire, of circa 1775 (see: C. Gilbert, The Life and Work of Thomas Chippendale, London, 1978, vol. II, p. 106, fig. 180). The presence of glue cramp-cuts and batten holes in the undersides of the seat rails is also associated with him.
However, a number of other features point equally to a different maker. Most significant of these is the design of the arms which scroll down directly into the top of the leg. This does not appear on any provenanced Chippendale chairs where the arm joins the seatrail some distance back from the top of the front leg. This same leg and arm construction as here was used on a set of chairs at Chirk Castle, Denbighshire, that are now attributed to Mayhew and Ince (see: The Dictionary of English Furniture, Leeds, 1986, p. 596). A suite from Cobham Hall, Kent, also now attributed to them, shared this arm design with the husk-entwined flowerhead cresting (sold anonymously, in these Rooms, 19 November 1992, lot 104). It therefore seems impossible to make a confident attribution of this chair to any individual out of the leading London makers of the period.
A settee of this pattern with very slight variations in the banding of the feet and from the J. D. Phillips collection, is illustrated in H. Cescinsky, English Furniture of the Eighteenth Century, London, n.d. [1909], vol. III, p. 210, fig. 246