CIRCA 1770-75, IN THE MANNER OF THOMAS CHIPPENDALE

This library/step stool - with fretted carrying-handle in 17th Century joint-stool manner - is designed in the George III 'Roman' fashion introduced by the Rome-trained court architects Sir William Chambers and Robert Adam. Embellished with pearled libation-paterae bas-reliefs, its plinth-supported and herm-tapered legs are sunk with fluted tablets in the manner of those of a 1760 table pattern in Thomas Chippendale, The Gentleman and Cabinet-Makers Director, 3rd ed. 1762 (pl. 116). This patera-headed herm-tapered leg-pattern is related to the suite of four hall chairs supplied by Chippendale for Harewood in 1773 - and indeed these share the same distinctive splay to the back leg (C. Gilbert, The Life and Work of Thomas Chippendale, London, 1978, vol.II, fig.196). The sunk panels within the herm legs were also part of Chippendale's ornamental vocabulary in the early 1770s, being introduced at Harewood on the dining chairs in 1770-71, as well as on the window Stools supplied circa 1772 (ibid., figs.146 and 392).