Lot Essay
These tall parlour chairs, with satyr-hoof feet and their fretted and serpentined frames comprised of voluted ribbon-scrolls embellished with Venus' scallop-shell badge and Roman acanthus foliage, relate to chair patterns in the French 'arabesque' fashion entitled Nouveaux Fauteuils and published in his Oeuvres, 1711, by Daniel Marot, 'architect' to King William III.
The chairs correspond closely to the 'India back' pattern executed for King George I's palace at Hampton Court by Richard Roberts (d.1729), chair-maker of 'The Royal Chair' in Marylebone Street. Roberts, who held the post of carver and joiner to the Royal Household, supplied a set of eighteen as late as 1717 for 'H.M.'s eating room' at Hampton Court. This set are illustrated in R. Edwards and M. Jourdain, Georgian Cabinet-Makers, London, 1955, p. 126, fig. 10, and discussed in The Dictionary of English Furniture Makers, 1660-1840, Leeds, 1986, pp. 752-753. Roberts' title for the chairback refers to the style of curved-splat Chinese chairs that had been imported by the East India Company.
A chair after the Roberts pattern was acquired by the Victoria and Albert Museum in 1909 (R. Edwards, English Chairs, London, 1951, no. 46).
R.W. Symonds clearly admired this type of chair and recommended it to clients; a set with very similar backs on plainer legs were in the collection of J.S. Sykes, Esq., and were illustrated in 'Chairs and Stools in the collection of Mr. J.S. Sykes', Apollo, January 1937, p. 23, fig, II. Lots 300-310 in this sale are also from the Sykes collection.
The chairs correspond closely to the 'India back' pattern executed for King George I's palace at Hampton Court by Richard Roberts (d.1729), chair-maker of 'The Royal Chair' in Marylebone Street. Roberts, who held the post of carver and joiner to the Royal Household, supplied a set of eighteen as late as 1717 for 'H.M.'s eating room' at Hampton Court. This set are illustrated in R. Edwards and M. Jourdain, Georgian Cabinet-Makers, London, 1955, p. 126, fig. 10, and discussed in The Dictionary of English Furniture Makers, 1660-1840, Leeds, 1986, pp. 752-753. Roberts' title for the chairback refers to the style of curved-splat Chinese chairs that had been imported by the East India Company.
A chair after the Roberts pattern was acquired by the Victoria and Albert Museum in 1909 (R. Edwards, English Chairs, London, 1951, no. 46).
R.W. Symonds clearly admired this type of chair and recommended it to clients; a set with very similar backs on plainer legs were in the collection of J.S. Sykes, Esq., and were illustrated in 'Chairs and Stools in the collection of Mr. J.S. Sykes', Apollo, January 1937, p. 23, fig, II. Lots 300-310 in this sale are also from the Sykes collection.