A SET OF SIX REGENCY MAHOGANY AND EBONY STRUNG DINING-CHAIRS

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THE CONTENTS OF PETIT FLEUR D'EAU, LAKE GENEVA LOTS 301-536 This charming house on the banks of Lake Geneva was originally a tiny but grandiose fishing pavilion, which was subsequently extended by the current owners. The celebrated interior designer Tom Parr, principal decorator at Colefax and Fowler following John Fowler's retirement, was commissioned to furnish the interiors. He created a wonderfully elegant series of rooms bathed in the natural light of the setting, which perfectly harmonized with the understated classicism of the architecture. The house abounds with delightful touches such as the hand-painted wall paper of the dining room based on 18th century Chinese wall paper at Drottninghölm, first admired by Nancy Lancaster, and the wonderfully theatrical split-level master bathroom with its galleried dressing room. The furniture and paintings, much of which is included in this sale, is a seamless blend of stylish Regency and Louis XVI pieces, balanced by a rich collection of floral still lives and British sporting pictures. Now that another generation of the family sadly no longer finds it can use the house, the collection is being sold, allowing others to recreate its interiors, whose setting in the words of Chester Jones in his history of Colefax and Fowler, was '... a tranquil place where time stands still and the presence of nature is felt all around'.

Details

A SET OF SIX REGENCY MAHOGANY AND EBONY STRUNG DINING-CHAIRS
Each banded overall, the curved shaped tablet top with a circular star-inset centre, above a padded seat covered in close-nailed green foliate material, on square saber legs headed by stars, three stamped 'G. STANLEY', restorations
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VAT rate of 5% is payable on hammer price plus buyer's premium.

Lot Essay

The parlour chairs are designed in the antique fashion promoted around 1800 by Thomas Hope's Duchess Street museum/mansion and by his guide-book Household Furniture and Interior Decoration, 1807. Their frames are scrolled and black-enriched in the 'Grecian' manner; while their tablet-rails are inlaid with Grecian-fretted ribbon cartouches and sunk libation-paterae bearing Egyptian sunbursts. They bear the craftsmen's stamp of G. Stanley, and it seems probably that he was employed, like B. Harmer, to execute the designs of a fashionable firm such as Messrs. Marsh and Tatham of Mount Street (see C. Gilbert, The Pictorial Dictionary of Marked London Furniture 1700-1840, Leeds, 1996, figs. 475-480).

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