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Lot Essay
The serpentine-framed and ribbon-splat chair with animal feet emerging from 'arabesque' acanthus-scrolls first featured in William de la Cour's Book of Ornament, 1741, but this chair, embellished with Jupiter's eagle-heads and claws has various details, such as the loop-pattern back combined with flowered acanthus and confronted C-scroll cartouches, which relate most closely to the parlour chair pattern published in Robert Manwaring's Cabinet and Chair-Maker's Real Friend and Companion, 1765 (E. White, Pictorial Dictionary of British 18th Century Furniture Design, Woodbridge, 1990, pp. 59, 76 and 77).
Their richly carved frames relate to that of a magnificent cabinet-on-stand reputed to have been supplied by Gillows of Lancaster to the Bellot family of Manchester and now at Temple Newsam House, Leeds (C. Gilbert, Furniture at Temple Newsam House and Lotherton Hall, Leeds, 1978, vol. I, pp. 50-55, no. 37).A pair of chairs of this model illustrated in F. Lewis Hinckley, The More Significant Georgian Furniture, New York, 1990, p. 30, pl. 10, no. 30, was sold anonymously, in these Rooms, 9 July 1992, lot 22. That the latter chairs also have a Lancashire provenance, it is possible that this chair can also support a tentative attribution to Gillows.
Their richly carved frames relate to that of a magnificent cabinet-on-stand reputed to have been supplied by Gillows of Lancaster to the Bellot family of Manchester and now at Temple Newsam House, Leeds (C. Gilbert, Furniture at Temple Newsam House and Lotherton Hall, Leeds, 1978, vol. I, pp. 50-55, no. 37).A pair of chairs of this model illustrated in F. Lewis Hinckley, The More Significant Georgian Furniture, New York, 1990, p. 30, pl. 10, no. 30, was sold anonymously, in these Rooms, 9 July 1992, lot 22. That the latter chairs also have a Lancashire provenance, it is possible that this chair can also support a tentative attribution to Gillows.