EARLY 19TH CENTURY

Royal architect and designer Sir William Chambers (d.1796) first popularized Chinese bamboo furniture in England, including seat furniture of a similar form, with the publication of his Designs of Chinese Buildings, Furniture, Dresses, Machines and Utensils...From the originals drawn in China by Mr Chambers, Architect (1757) following his journey to China in 1748 (see P. Ward-Jackson, English Furniture Designs of the Eighteenth Century, London, 1958, pl.135-136 for some plates reproduced). The fashion for the exotic orient was enthusiastically championed in the early 19th century by George, Prince of Wales and his decoration of his seaside villa in Brighton. A related suite of chairs was supplied for the corridor at the Brighton Pavilion by the firm of Elward, Marsh and Taham in 1802 (see F. Collard, Regency Furniture, 1985, p.198). A further set of chairs of virtually identical form to the present pair was supplied as part of the decoration of Frogmore House, Queen Charlotte's private sanctuary on the grounds of Windsor, designed by the architect James Wyatt. The chairs appear in a watercolor of the Green Closet as executed by C. Wild and later published as part of W.H. Pyne's Royal Residences in 1819 (reproduced opposite).

Further examples of this form were sold Sotheby's London, 25 April 1986, lot 89 and Christie's London, 17 November 1994, lots 136-137.