ATTRIBUTED TO PAUL SAUNDERS, CIRCA 1765

The form and ornament of this elegant settee reflects the influence of 'French' fashion designs for chairs in Thomas Chippendale's The Gentleman and Cabinet-Maker's Director, 1754 (pls. XVIII-XIX) and can be traced to the workshop of the Soho Square cabinet-maker and tapissier Paul Saunders (d.1771). Although the majority of Saunders’ work is undocumented, he supplied a closely related suite of chairs to the 1st Earl of Leicester for Holkham Hall in 1757 (A. Coleridge, Chippendale Furniture, London, 1968, p.211, figs. 378-379). This settee’s cabriole leg with its foliate carved cabochon and distinctive scrolled foot is a variation of the Holkham suite and is apparently unique to Saunders’ workshop. A matching armchair, almost certainly from the same suite, was bequeathed by the collector C. D. Rotch to the Victoria and Albert Museum and is presently in their collection (W.50-1962).
Chairs that feature this leg design include a set of four armchairs from the collection of Judge Irwin Untermeyer now at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (J. Gloag and Y. Hackenbroch, English Furniture in the Irwin Untermeyer Collection, Cambridge, 1958, pls. 116-117) and is also seen on suite of furniture from the collection of the Earls of Ancaster, Grimsthorpe Castle, Lincolnshire; two of the armchairs were sold at Christie’s, London, 11 May 1934, lot 168. Other examples include a single armchair sold anonymously at Christie's, London 2 May 2013 and a pair of armchairs from the property of the late Barbara Campbell Golding sold at Christie's, London 27 November 2003, lot 100.