CIRCA 1735, IN THE MANNER OF THE ST. MARTIN'S LANE SYNDICATE

The elegant 'French' serpentine frame of this armchair evolved from the Huguenot ornamentalist William De la Cour's First Book of Ornament, 1741. It included patterns for related chairs with 'folded-ribbon' splats, scallop-centered crests with flowered involuted scrolls and carvings which included Venus's scallop-shell combined with Roman foliage. The designs of De la Cour (d.1767) who became Master of the Edinburgh Trustee's Academy in 1760, played an influential role on St Martin's Lane style of the mid-eighteenth century (E. White, Pictorial Dictionary of Furniture Design, Woodbridge, 1990, p. 59.). A similar armchair with an interlaced back was sold in The Samuel Messer Collection, Christie's, London, 5 December 1991, lot 58.
The present example is probably the one from the collection of J. Mallett, Esq., and illustrated in P. Macquoid, A History of English Furniture: The Age of Mahogany, London, 1906, p. 62, fig. 51.