SIX LATE 18TH / 19TH CENTURY, FOUR 19TH CENTURY, EIGHT 20TH CENTURY

The pattern for these distinctive parlour dining-chairs, derives from a design for a `new pattern chair’ published by Thomas Chippendale (d.1779), in The Gentleman and Cabinet Maker’s Director, 1st ed., 1754, pl XII. English pattern books were certainly used by Irish cabinet-makers, but the designs were generally adapted to include Irish idiosyncrasies - in this case the shape of the elongated shells to the upper corners of the toprail, a feature rarely employed in English examples (The Knight of Glin and J. Peill, Irish Furniture, New Haven and London, 2007, p. 110). These ‘improved’ English designs and patterns were continually referred to and repeated in Ireland throughout the 18th and into the 19th centuries. A more elaborate version featuring typically Irish shell-carved cabriole legs and trifid feet is dated circa 1754 and thus presumably one of the earliest existing Irish chairs of this design (ibid, p. 211, no. 29). The popularity and longevity of the pattern explains in part the existence of long `matched’ sets such as the present lot, existing sets having been extended either by the manufacture of `new’ chairs, or by the purchase of existing `antique’ chairs.

Perhaps the most notable related set of dining-chairs was that which was almost certainly supplied to Richard Talbot, (d. 1834) of Malahide Castle, Co. Dublin during the extensive remodelling of the castle in 1760. They were sold Christie’s house sale, Malahide Castle, 10-12 May 1976, lot 123 and then again from the collection of the Hon. Desmond Guinness, Leixlip Castle, Co. Kildare, Sotheby’s, London, 7 July 2000, lot 27 (£157,500 incl. premium). A further related set of sixteen chairs with moulded legs was formerly in the collection of the 3rd Earl of Iveagh at Elveden Hall, Norfolk, sold Christie’s house sale, 21-24 May 1984, lot 436 (£60,480 including premium). Another matched set of sixteen was in the collection of Mr. & Mrs. David Ker, and is included in `Three Collections’, Christie’s, London, 5 November 2015, lot 175.