Lot Essay
The chairs have 'tablet' backs and turned arms enriched with ebony spheres in the early 19th Century French antique manner, and correspond to a chair-pattern featured in a design by George Bullock (d.1836) for a banqueting-room, embellished with armour and scenes of ancient tournaments, that he executed for Alexander Wentworth Macdonald of Macdonald, 2nd Baron Macdonald (d.1824) at Armadale Castle, on the Isle of Skye (C. Wainwright et al., George Bullock: Cabinet Maker, London, 1988, p. 31, fig. 5). The Castle had been designed about 1814 by James Gillespie Graham (d.1855), who styled himself in 1818 as 'Architect in Scotland to the Prince Regent'. However, Bullock might have been indebted for the design of the chairs to the architect William Atkinson (d.1839), with whom he collaborated at Abbotsford, Roxburghshire and at other commissions in Scotland. A further design for a chair of this pattern survives in the Bullock/'Wilkinson's Tracings' preserved in the Birmingham Museums and Art Gallery (Wainwright, ibid, p. 114).
Another chair, no doubt from this same set, was sold anonymously, Phillips London, 25 November 1997, lot 298.
Another chair, no doubt from this same set, was sold anonymously, Phillips London, 25 November 1997, lot 298.