LATE 17TH EARLY 18TH CENTURY, ATTRIBUTED TO THOMAS ROBERTS

Details

A QUEEN ANNE GILTWOOD OPEN ARMCHAIR
LATE 17TH EARLY 18TH CENTURY, ATTRIBUTED TO THOMAS ROBERTS
The rectangular padded back and seat covered in yellow cut- velvet with green tasseled braiding, the scrolled arms carved with foliage and with similar scrolled supports, on foliate-carved legs joined by a pierced H-shaped stretcher, with foliate-carved tapering block feet, replaced elements, rerailed, regilt

Provenance

Eric Moller, Thorncombe Park, Surrey, whose collection was assembled in the 1940s & 1950s.
Anonymous sale, Sotheby's London, 12 November 1982, lot 28.

Literature

R.W. Symonds, Furniture Making in 17th and 18th Century England, London, 1955, pl. 131.

Special notice

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Lot Essay

The stately armchair has an Ionic waved-scroll frame and scallop-draped upholstery that reflects the Louis Quatorze 'Roman' fashion popularised through the patterns issued in the Nouveaux Livres de Licts de differentes penseez, c.1702 published by Daniel Marot (d.1752). Its flower-festooned legs, with garlanded and involuted trusses wrapped by Roman acanthus, feature in a Marot pattern for a throne carved with a crown and shell-enriched frame. The armchair can be attributed to the joiner/carver Thomas Roberts (d.1714), who traded from 1686 at 'The Royal Chair' in Marylebone Street, Westminster, and carved Queen Anne's 'Rich Chair of State' in 1702 (A. Bowett, English Furniture 1660-1714, Woodbridge, 2002. pl.8.21). The same pattern of hermed and trussed legs enriched with festoons and flowers appears on a suite of couches and 'six large stools' that Roberts is thought to have supplied for William Cavendish, 1st Duke of Devonshire (d. 1707). The celebrated collection of English furniture formed by Eric Moller in the 1940s and 1950s was one of several formed under guidance of the furniture historian R. W. Symonds. Moller's collection formed the basis of Symonds' Furniture Making in 17th and 18th Century England of 1955.

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