.jpg?w=1)
拍品專文
The settee is distinguished by the unusual shape and carving of the seat rail which also features in nearly identical form on a set of chairs in the Lady Lever Art Gallery in Port Sunlight (see P. Macquoid, English Furniture, Tapestry and Needlework of the XVIth-XIXth Centuries - A record of the Collection in the Lady Lever Art Gallery, Port Sunlight formed by the First Viscount Leverhulme, London, 1928, pl. 38, fig. 127). The Lady Lever chairs are attributed to the cabinet-maker Giles Grendey on the basis of its equally unusual imbricated shell back design which features on a set of chairs that were likely commissioned in the early 1740s by John, 2nd Earl Poulett (d. 1764) shortly after he inherited Hinton House, Somerset (sold by Earl Poulett, Sotheby's London, 1 November 1968, lot 58). The Hinton chairs in turn relate to the Gunton Park set and another set of chairs which are labelled by Grendey (illustrated in C. Gilbert, Pictorial Dictionary of Marked London Furniture 1700-1840, Leeds, 1996, figs. 437 and 438). A further argument for a Grendey attribution is the design of the settee's chair back which matches the set of walnut dining-chairs, several bearing Grendey's label (ibid., fig. 435). This chair back derives from a 1740s parlour chair pattern illustrated in the trade-sheet of the London chair-makers Landall & Gordon (see A. Heal, The London Furniture Makers, 1953, p. 93).
A similar double-chairback settee with eagles' headed arms and shell crests was in the collection of Percival D. Griffiths, Esq. and is illustrated in H. Cescinski, English Furniture of the Eighteenth Century, n.d., vol. II, p. 23, fig. 5. Another was sold anonymously, Sotheby's, London, 4 July 1997, lot 31. A similar settee was sold as part of a collection of walnut furniture removed from a Queen Anne London town house, Christie's, London, 7 June 2007, lot 75. The back pattern, with additional enrichments on the splat volutes, features on an eagle-headed and eagle-clawed armchair formerly in the collection of Sir John Ramsden of Bulstrode, Buckinghamshire (R. Edwards, Dictionary of English Furniture, rev. edn., 1954, vol. I, p. 263, fig. 116).
A similar double-chairback settee with eagles' headed arms and shell crests was in the collection of Percival D. Griffiths, Esq. and is illustrated in H. Cescinski, English Furniture of the Eighteenth Century, n.d., vol. II, p. 23, fig. 5. Another was sold anonymously, Sotheby's, London, 4 July 1997, lot 31. A similar settee was sold as part of a collection of walnut furniture removed from a Queen Anne London town house, Christie's, London, 7 June 2007, lot 75. The back pattern, with additional enrichments on the splat volutes, features on an eagle-headed and eagle-clawed armchair formerly in the collection of Sir John Ramsden of Bulstrode, Buckinghamshire (R. Edwards, Dictionary of English Furniture, rev. edn., 1954, vol. I, p. 263, fig. 116).