IN THE MANNER OF GEORGE OAKLEY, EARLY 19TH CENTURY

These star and flute-inlaid bergères are designed in the French/antique manner popularised by Thomas Hope's Household Furniture and Interior Decoration, 1807. With their Grecian tablet-rails and legs they also relate to a 'library Fauteuil' pattern of 1807 illustrated in George Smith's Collection of Designs for Household Furniture and Interior Decoration, London, 1808 (pl. 42). The form of their scrolled tablets combined with Etruscan-black star and ribbon inlay, corresponds to a library chair illustrated in C. Musgrave, Regency Furniture, London, 1961 (fig. 41 b). However, in place of the Grecian-stele termination of these chairs, the latter have ram-heads, in the manner of another of Smith's patterns (pl. 43). This ram-headed chair, belongs to a suite which may have been commissioned shortly before his death by the 13th Earl of Clanricarde (d. 1808) (a pair from the Clanricarde suite was sold anonymously, Christie's, London, 6 July 1989, lot 49). The ebony flutes of these chair legs also feature on dining-chairs supplied around 1810 to the Duke of Richmond at Goodwood House (illustrated in M. Jourdain, Regency Furniture 1795-1830, London, rev.ed., 1965, p. 27, fig. 35).
A related ebonised bergère was sold anonymously, Christie's, London, 25 June 1987, lot 41.