CIRCA 1815-1825, POSSIBLY BY WILLIAM TROTTER OF EDINBURGH

The drawing-room Grecian seat is conceived in the French antique fashion and intended for japanning in trompe l'oeil as ormolu-enriched and black-figured rosewood. The lyre-scrolled ends, evoking the Parnassus poetry deity Apollo, evolve from a pattern in Thomas Sheraton's Cabinet Encyclopaedia (1804-6); while its triumphal palm-flowered and Cupid-bow frame derives from a pattern by the Catherine Street firm of Messrs Morgan and Saunders, issued in 1809 in R. Ackermann's The Repository of Arts. Related furniture by the Edinburgh cabinet-maker William Trotter (d. 1834) of Princes Street is discussed in F. Bamford's, Dictionary of Edinburgh Furniture Makers, of Leeds, 1983. Amongst related seats, bearing inscribed dates from the second decade of the 19th century, is one from the collection of Sir Lawrence Craigie (d.1871) of Glendoick, Scotland, which has also been attributed to Trotter (sold Christie's London, 11 April 1991, lot 45).