Lot Essay
Designed in the early 19th Century 'antique' style, this 'library reading-chair' is appropriately serpentined in lyre form alluding to that of an Apollo chair illustrated by Thomas Sheraton in his Cabinet Encyclopaedia, 1807, pl. 10. Messrs. Gillow, in their Estimate Sketch Books for 1803 and 1807, variously refer to this form of bergère as 'Ashburnham' and 'Uxbridge', after one supplied to Henry Bayly, 1st Earl of Uxbridge. Related library bergères were supplied to Jonas Langford-Brooke for Mere Hall, Cheshire (anonymous sale, Christie's, London, 4 July 2002, lot 153) while others at Broughton Hall were invoiced by Gillows in 1811-13 (illustrated in C. Hussey, English Country Houses: Late Georgian, Glasgow, 1958, p. 95, fig. 166).