MID-18TH CENTURY

A.C.J. Wall was a Birmingham industrialist who formed his collection in the years immediately before and after the Second World War. His collection was of a more eclectic type than those of his many contemporaries who were influenced by the writings of R.W. Symonds. Wall's collection included the Sheffield Park chairs, a set of neo-classical dining-chairs attributed to Gillows which were bought in 1970 by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, and deaccessioned at Christie's New York on 12 October 1996, lot 71 ($508,500 £346,000). Wall's collection also included a carved mahogany commode from the same group as the Raynham Hall commode, now in the Philadelphia Museum of Art. In the 1930s, these commodes were confidently attributed to Thomas Chippendale on the basis of their Director design source and superb carving, but this attribution is not now accepted. Wall also owned a pair of library armchairs from a set with dolphin arm-terminals and feet. His pair is illustrated in the first edition of The Dictionary of English Furniture and is now in an American private collection. (See also lots 47 and 48 in this sale which were also in the collection of the late A.C.J. Wall).

The baluster stem enriched with Roman foliage and Grecian palms relates to bedposts, such as those supplied by Thomas Chippendale for Harewood House, Yorkshire (C. Gilbert, The Life and Work of Thomas Chippendale, London, 1978, vol. II, fig. 49). The form of its hexagonal top with tripod-scroll support relates to that of candlestands supplied by Chippendale in 1758 to Blair Castle, Perthshire, Scotland (Gilbert, ibid., vol. II, fig. 378).