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Lot Essay
Although of pegged construction, these chairs are of an identical model and size to a set in an English private collection to which they were almost certainly supplied by Mayhew and Ince circa 1775. A bill survives from the firm from that year for other furniture that remains in the collection.
The link with a known Mayhew collection is reinforced by the design of the chairs. A set of chairs sold from Bramshill, Hampshire, in these Rooms, 27 April 1956, lot 99 (Country Life, 11 July 1903) has a very similar type of very high arm combined with a characteristic Mayhew panelled leg. The panelled leg on the Bramshill chairs relates very closely to those on chairs supplied to the Earl of Darnley at Cobham Hall, Kent, one of the firm's most enduring clients (C. Cator, 'The Earl of Kerry and Mayhew and Ince: The Idlest Ostentation', Furniture History, 1990, pp. 27-29).
The link with a known Mayhew collection is reinforced by the design of the chairs. A set of chairs sold from Bramshill, Hampshire, in these Rooms, 27 April 1956, lot 99 (Country Life, 11 July 1903) has a very similar type of very high arm combined with a characteristic Mayhew panelled leg. The panelled leg on the Bramshill chairs relates very closely to those on chairs supplied to the Earl of Darnley at Cobham Hall, Kent, one of the firm's most enduring clients (C. Cator, 'The Earl of Kerry and Mayhew and Ince: The Idlest Ostentation', Furniture History, 1990, pp. 27-29).