CIRCA 1740-50

This vase splat parlour chair, with cabriole supports embellished with Venus shells and terminating in Jupiter’s eagle claw feet, is designed in the George II ‘antique’ manner. The overall design is of a well-known pattern that while it cannot be firmly attributed to a particular workshop can be seen in chairs bearing the respective stamps of Giles Grendey, and Samuel Sharp (C. Gilbert, Pictorial Dictionary of Marked London Furniture 1700-1840, Leeds, 1996, fig. 434; A. Bowett, Early Georgian Furniture 1715-1740, Woodbridge, 2010, plate 1:27). Lucy Wood describes and illustrates the variations of this type of chair in The Upholstered Furniture in the Lady Lever Gallery, vol. I, New Haven and London, 2008, pp. 245-263). Her comparables suggest that the use of the carved ‘C’ scroll on the supports is often associated to chairs attributed to Grendey (ibid., figs. 20A, 154, 164, 165, 169 and 170).