Lot 171
171
A MAHOGANY LARGE OPEN ARMCHAIR of George II style and attributed to Sidney Letts, with panelled back, cane seat and suede squab cushion, the open arms covered with scrolled eagle's-heads, the supports carved with flowers surmounted by scrolls carved with flowers surmounted by scrolls and eagle's-heads, on cabriole legs, the front legs with masks and on paw feet, the rear legs carved on the knees with acanthus on claw-and-ball feet, early 20th Century

Details
A MAHOGANY LARGE OPEN ARMCHAIR of George II style and attributed to Sidney Letts, with panelled back, cane seat and suede squab cushion, the open arms covered with scrolled eagle's-heads, the supports carved with flowers surmounted by scrolls carved with flowers surmounted by scrolls and eagle's-heads, on cabriole legs, the front legs with masks and on paw feet, the rear legs carved on the knees with acanthus on claw-and-ball feet, early 20th Century

Lot Essay

Its serpentine frame is embellished with arabesque satyr-masks emerging from bacchic lion feet and with garland-bearing eagle-heads in the 'antique' manner promoted by William Kent, Master Carpenter to King George II. The voluted-cartouche splat derives from engravings by Johann Lauch (fl. 1724-57), such as were plagiarised in Thomas and Batty Langley, The City and Country Builder's and Workman's Treasury of Designs, 1740. This chair is copied from the architect Sir John Soane's 'Chippendale chair', displayed at his museum in Lincoln's Inn Fields; and it forms part of a suite of related seat furniture discussed by Eben Howard Gay in his, Chippendale Romance, New York, 1915. (See: R. W. Symonds, Furniture in the Soane Museum, Country Life, 27 January 1950, pp.220-1.)

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