EARLY 19TH CENTURY, REDECORATED

This Grecian stool, with lions' mask-headed fluted legs and paw feet, reflects the archeologically fashionable Greco-Roman style developed from furniture designs published in C.H. Tatham's Etchings of Ancient Ornamental Architecture of 1800. Not long after Tatham, George Smith published his Collection of Designs for Household Furniture in 1807 further building upon the popular understanding and consumption of the style. Tatham, whose designs signaled an important contribution to the integration of 'antique' decoration in England, illustrated a number of comparable stools with fluted pilaster legs and paw feet (see E. Joy, English Furniture: 1800-1851, 1977, p. 38). Smith, in turn, also employed these distinctive features, depicting a window seat with similar paw feet and more significantly a cut-cornered seat that can be compared to the present stool (Collection, plate 52).