ATTRIBUTED TO GILLOWS, CIRCA 1770

These chairs correspond closely to two Gillows designs for chairs with shaped horizontal splats. In 1764 Richard Gillow had written to Wilson & Brown of the Strand asking for a sketch for such a chair, `there are very neat chairs now made in London with. ribs fix'd level back to back and not upright and also the seats made hollow before upholstered. Should be obliged for a sketch (at large) of one of those sort of chairs...' Gillows illustrated such a chair, with cluster-column legs, in December 1769, made for Captain John Hasell (d.1782), a commander in the East India Company, who sailed aboard the Duke of Portland from February 1770 to June 1772 bound for Bombay (Susan Stuart, Gillows of Lancaster and London 1730 - 1840, Woodbridge, 2008, vol.I, p.155, pl.103). Another watercolour in the Gillow archive shows a chair almost identical to to those offered here, with a plain seat, ie not `hollow', and bamboo-turned legs. They were referred to as `fiddle-back' chairs because of the open fret shapes that are similar to those seen on fiddles and violins. (ibid. p.155, pls 104, 105 & 106).