CIRCA 1810, POSSIBLY BY GILLOWS

The chair back, with its palm-flowered capitals and Ionic-scrolled tablet, reflects the robust George IV 'Grecian' style. Its pattern was published by the architect and Professor of Perspective Richard Brown , whose Rudiments of Drawing Cabinet and Upholstery Furniture, 1819 praised the character of such furniture as being 'bold in the outline, rich and chaste in the ornaments, and durable from the rejection of little parts' (E. Joy,Pictorial Dictionary of British 19th century Furniture Design, Woodbridge, 1977, p.213). He noted that the fashion had been introduced by publications of the French architect Charles Percier, as well as by those of the connoisseur Thomas Hope and the cabinet-maker George Smith. The 'Rudiments' also included designs in the manner of George Bullock (d.1818), whose workshops were situated near Brown and for whom he may have contributed designs (S. Jervis, Dictionary of Designs and Designers, 1984, pp.86 and 87) . Bullock was also provided with designs by William Atkinson, the architect to the Board of Ordnance. It was Atkinson, as the architect of Broughton Hall, Yorkshire, who may have invented the design of similar crest-rails on its library chairs invoiced in the 1811-1813 accounts of Gillow of London and Lancaster and provided en suite with 'elegant mahogany Grecian couches on stout carved feet' (C. Hussey, English Country House, Late Georgian, London, 1958 p.100 fig 181).

Interestingly, this same chair pattern back appears on Grecian chairs illustrated in situ in the collection of the Earls of Jersey at Middleton Park, Oxfordshire, circa 1900. That same room also included a desk identical to that in the Library at Broughton, Yorkshire supplied by John Syers.