Lot Essay
These chairs are copies of the celebrated suite reputedly for the Prince of Palagonia for the Drawing Room of the Villa Palagonia at Bagheria, near Palermo, Sicily. The suite was subsequently bought by the Earl of Derby circa 1910 from Lenygon's for Derby House, Stratford Place, London and it seems probable that these chairs, with their English construction and mahogany seat-rails, were copied by Lenygon at the beginning of the century
A pair of chairs from this suite, with the monogram 'PPL' were sold Christie's New York, 28 April 1990, lot 175. However, as A.Gonzalez-Palacios noted in his 'The Prince of Palagonia, Goethe and Glass Furniture', Burlington Magazine, August 1971 the monogram does not correspond with the princes' initials and may emanate from a different commission. The Sicilian origin, however, seems to be validated by the closely related suite of furniture made for La Favorita, the pavilion built for King Ferdinand IV near Palermo circa 1799
A chair from the suite is illustrated in A. Gonzalez-Palacios, Il Tempio del Gusto, vol. II, Milan, 1984, p.275, no. 629; another is in the Museum for Kunsthandwerk, Frankfurt
A pair of chairs from this suite, with the monogram 'PPL' were sold Christie's New York, 28 April 1990, lot 175. However, as A.Gonzalez-Palacios noted in his 'The Prince of Palagonia, Goethe and Glass Furniture', Burlington Magazine, August 1971 the monogram does not correspond with the princes' initials and may emanate from a different commission. The Sicilian origin, however, seems to be validated by the closely related suite of furniture made for La Favorita, the pavilion built for King Ferdinand IV near Palermo circa 1799
A chair from the suite is illustrated in A. Gonzalez-Palacios, Il Tempio del Gusto, vol. II, Milan, 1984, p.275, no. 629; another is in the Museum for Kunsthandwerk, Frankfurt