A PAIR OF GEORGE III MAHOGANY LIBRARY OPEN ARMCHAIRS

Details
A PAIR OF GEORGE III MAHOGANY LIBRARY OPEN ARMCHAIRS
Each with padded rectangular back, arms and seat covered in close-nailed yellow silk damask, the arms on downswept supports, each with a flowerhead issuing foliage above blind trellis, the seat-rail with repeated flowerhead-carved moulding, on square blind trelliswork chamfered legs headed by later pierced confronting C-scroll angle-brackets, on pierced block feet with sunk castors, restorations, the arm-rests possibly originally in beech (2)
Provenance
By family tradition The Reverend Paul Cromwell Bush, The Rectory, Duloe, Cornwall. His wife was the last direct descendant of Oliver Cromwell.
Thence by descent to his great granddaughter, the present owner.

Lot Essay

The chairs have serpentined arms and fretted pilaster legs terminating in Doric guttae such as feature on chair patterns issued in Thomas Chippendale's The Gentleman and Cabinet-Maker's Director, London, 1754, pls. XXI and XXIV. Their form and acanthus-enrichments derive from a celebrated suite of furniture formerly at St. Giles's House, Dorset, which was described in 1855 as 'very valuable and fine by Chippendale (Anthony, 7th Earl of Shaftesbury's A Few Traditions of the Mansion and Estate received from my father).

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