Lot Essay
The French-style serpentined and acanthus-enriched frames with voluted feet and panelled rails represent the height of fashion in the late 1750's. The style corresponds with patterns issued by Thomas Chippendale in his Gentleman and Cabinet-Maker's Director, 1754-62 and in Mayhew and Ince's Universal System of Household Furniture, 1763.
This pattern seems to have been first commissioned by George, 1st Lord Lyttleton (d.1773), King George II's Chancellor of the Exchequer, for Hagley Hall, Worcestershire. Side chairs of this model are illustrated (and ambitiously attributed) in Oliver Brackett, Thomas Chippendale, London, 1925, pp.xii-xiii and p.173, pl.XVII. It now seems more likely that the chairs at Hagley were supplied by Paul Saunders, famous for having supplied the tapestries and tapestry-covered seat furniture in the Drawing Room. The payments to Saunders in the period 1758-1760 cover more than this furniture and John Cornforth has suggested that he supplied the side chairs as well (see: J.Cornforth, 'Hagley Hall, Worcestershire - II', Country Life, 4 May 1989, p.155).
This pattern seems to have been first commissioned by George, 1st Lord Lyttleton (d.1773), King George II's Chancellor of the Exchequer, for Hagley Hall, Worcestershire. Side chairs of this model are illustrated (and ambitiously attributed) in Oliver Brackett, Thomas Chippendale, London, 1925, pp.xii-xiii and p.173, pl.XVII. It now seems more likely that the chairs at Hagley were supplied by Paul Saunders, famous for having supplied the tapestries and tapestry-covered seat furniture in the Drawing Room. The payments to Saunders in the period 1758-1760 cover more than this furniture and John Cornforth has suggested that he supplied the side chairs as well (see: J.Cornforth, 'Hagley Hall, Worcestershire - II', Country Life, 4 May 1989, p.155).