Lot Essay
This form of cartouche-shaped back with pierced splat appears on a set of mahogany dining-chairs supplied to Spencer House, now at Althorp, Northamptonshire (J. Friedman, Spencer House, 1993, p. 271, fig. 239 [photographs from Country Life, 1926]). A closely related chair was in the James Thursby Pelham Collection, illustrated in P. Macquoid and R. Edwards, The Dictionary of English Furniture, rev. ed., 1954, vol. I, p. 297, fig. 225.