Lot Essay
These japanned and cane-seated chairs, with Grecian-scrolled columnar legs, are designed in the French antique fashion popularised by Thomas Sheraton's Cabinet Dictionary, 1803.
Their reeded leg form, as well as the paterae bearing bacchic lion-heads, feature on chairs bearing the brand of the Wardour Street chair-maker John Gee, who was established in Soho in 1799. He was described as 'Chairmaker and Turner to His Majesty' and his firm was granted a Royal Warrant in 1804 (C. Gilbert, Pictorial Dictionary of Marked London Furniture, Leeds, 1996, p. 29 and figs. 380 and 390).
Their reeded leg form, as well as the paterae bearing bacchic lion-heads, feature on chairs bearing the brand of the Wardour Street chair-maker John Gee, who was established in Soho in 1799. He was described as 'Chairmaker and Turner to His Majesty' and his firm was granted a Royal Warrant in 1804 (C. Gilbert, Pictorial Dictionary of Marked London Furniture, Leeds, 1996, p. 29 and figs. 380 and 390).