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拍品專文
This library stool pattern, with hollowed seat volute-scrolled in the elegant Grecian Ionic manner, is likely to have been invented in the early 1760s for Christ Church, Oxford. Its form resembles the capital of the 'cippus' altar, featuring on 'Etruscan' vases, and reflects the George III 'antique' fashion promoted by the Society of Dilettanti through their patronage of the artist-architect, James 'Athenian' Stuart's Antiquities of Athens of 1762.
Appropriate for a library seat, both sides bear libation-patera labels recalling Ovid's Metamorphoses and the history of the sun deity Apollo and his love Clytie, and are flowered with the Apollo's sunflower badge. It is also infused with gothic elements, suitable for the ancient foundation at Christ Church, with its parchment-scrolled seat, its spindled cross-rails and its stretcher-ties. It follows what is almost certainly a 'pattern' stool, which is retained at the College, and its combination of antique and medieval forms perhaps demonstrates the architectural influence of the University's gentleman-architect, Sir Roger Newdigate of Arbury Hall and his patronage of the architect, Henry Keene (d. 1776), Surveyor of Westminster Abbey (for the 'highly finished' pattern stool see C. Gilbert, The Life and Work of Thomas Chippendale, Leeds, 1978, vol. I, p. 165). The College Library, designed around 1752, had been fitted out during the following decade by G. Shakespear and J. Phillips.
Payments to Chippendale are noted in the Christ Church Building Accounts for 21 July 1764 as: 'Mr Chippendale's Bill Stools for the Library...£38 15.0'. There was an additional payment of 18s 6d to 'Saunders for carriage of the Stools from London' (ibid., p. 156; Christ Church Libary MS no. 373, f26). It appears that more stools were made to this pattern in 1774 by the Oxford cabinet-maker Richard Powell (fl.1765-77), as twenty-six of this form survive at Christ Church. Others can also be found in Brasenose College Library, Bodleian Library, Old Radcliffe Observatory and the Divinity School (G. Beard ed., Dictionary of English Furniture Makers, Leeds, 1986, pp. 710-711; Gilbert, loc. cit., p. 165).
Amongst unprovenanced stools of this pattern is one acquired in 1963 by the Victoria & Albert Museum (ibid.).
Appropriate for a library seat, both sides bear libation-patera labels recalling Ovid's Metamorphoses and the history of the sun deity Apollo and his love Clytie, and are flowered with the Apollo's sunflower badge. It is also infused with gothic elements, suitable for the ancient foundation at Christ Church, with its parchment-scrolled seat, its spindled cross-rails and its stretcher-ties. It follows what is almost certainly a 'pattern' stool, which is retained at the College, and its combination of antique and medieval forms perhaps demonstrates the architectural influence of the University's gentleman-architect, Sir Roger Newdigate of Arbury Hall and his patronage of the architect, Henry Keene (d. 1776), Surveyor of Westminster Abbey (for the 'highly finished' pattern stool see C. Gilbert, The Life and Work of Thomas Chippendale, Leeds, 1978, vol. I, p. 165). The College Library, designed around 1752, had been fitted out during the following decade by G. Shakespear and J. Phillips.
Payments to Chippendale are noted in the Christ Church Building Accounts for 21 July 1764 as: 'Mr Chippendale's Bill Stools for the Library...£38 15.0'. There was an additional payment of 18s 6d to 'Saunders for carriage of the Stools from London' (ibid., p. 156; Christ Church Libary MS no. 373, f26). It appears that more stools were made to this pattern in 1774 by the Oxford cabinet-maker Richard Powell (fl.1765-77), as twenty-six of this form survive at Christ Church. Others can also be found in Brasenose College Library, Bodleian Library, Old Radcliffe Observatory and the Divinity School (G. Beard ed., Dictionary of English Furniture Makers, Leeds, 1986, pp. 710-711; Gilbert, loc. cit., p. 165).
Amongst unprovenanced stools of this pattern is one acquired in 1963 by the Victoria & Albert Museum (ibid.).