LATE 18TH CENTURY, ATTRIBUTED TO MAYHEW AND INCE

The 'Roman' medallion-back chairs, with antique-fluted frames wrapped by poetic 'Apollo' laurels, are designed in the elegant George III French 'cabriolet' fashion of the 1770s. Chairs of similar pattern, with rose-crowned crestings, formed part of a suite of seat furniture commissioned at this period by Hugh Smythson, Duke of Northumberland (d.1786), and may have been amongst the seat furniture supplied in the early 1770s for Northumberland House, London by the Golden Square firm of John Mayhew and William Ince (P. Macquoid and R. Edwards, The Dictionary of English Furniture, rev. ed. 1954, vol. 1, p.290, fig. 203). The present chairs, which are likely to have been commissioned by Edward Davenport Davies (d.1847), harmonise with the antique or Roman-fashioned stucco ceiling of the Drawing Room at Capesthorne Hall, Cheshire, where they were illustrated in situ around 1840 in a watercolour by James Johnson (J. Cornforth, English Interiors 1790-1848, London, 1978, fig 77). Three matching chairs, with differing upholstery can be seen in a photograph of The State Bedroom in Guide to Capesthorne, 1982, p.24.