POSSIBLY BY INCE & MAYHEW, CIRCA 1775

These chairs relate to a pair of chairs attributed to Ince & Mayhew formerly in the Mytton collection at Halston Hall, Shropshire (sold Christie’s, London, 22 November 2007, lot 636, £48,500 inc. premium). Ince & Mayhew supplied furniture to the Myttons' neighbour and friend, Sir Thomas Edwardes Bt. for his London house at 17 Edwards Street, Marylebone, for which bills exist. Similarly to the chairs offered here, the chairbacks are filled with radiating pierced splats centring in an oval - although in the Mytton example this is painted with the family’s coat of arms. Both sets of chairs also feature chair arms that terminate in a carved flattened scroll before descending directly into the tops of the legs. The fashion for chairs with round backs seems to have superseded oval backs as seen in Thomas Chippendale’s sets of chairs for Burton Constable, Yorkshire, Mersham-le-Hatch, Kent, and Nostell Priory, Yorkshire, that date to 1775 and later. A related 'Catherine Wheel' pattern features in the late 1780s Estimate Sketch Books of Gillows of London and Lancaster (ed. L. Boynton, Gillow Furniture Designs 1760-1800, Royston, 1995, fig. 269).