ATTRIBUTED TO WILLIAM BASTARD, CIRCA 1755

These wonderful 'Chinese Chippendale' chairs formed part of a dragon-crested suite commissioned for a Chinese-papered bedroom apartment at Lulworth Castle, Dorset by Edward Weld (d. 1761). Soon after he came of age in 1726 Weld began to refurbish the Jacobean house, a gradual process that continued for over thirty years. Most of the work was entrusted to the local family firm of architect-builders, joiners and upholders, the Bastards of Blandford Forum (Jean Manco and Francis Kelly, ‘Lulworth Castle from 1700’, Architectural History, Vol. 34, 1991, 145–70, pp. 146–53; Polly Legg, ‘The Bastards of Blandford: an inventory of their losses in the fire of 1731’, Furniture History, Vol. 30, 1994, 15–42, p. 21 & no. 24). Up to the mid-1740s Weld concentrated on the main reception rooms and the Chapel, and in 1750s work was undertaken on the bedrooms: one of Weld’s letters written to John Bastard in 1754 concerns the 'green mohair for the best chamber' (Weld MSS in Dorset Record Office) and the principal bedroom on the first floor was hung with crimson silk damask in 1755–56. It is probable that this set of chairs was provided for one bedroom, while other sets, with minor variations to the carving were provided for other bedrooms, including a set with flowered seat-rails. On this set of chairs addorsed dragons guard Venus-shell badges carved on the serpentined cresting, while reeds lap the zig-zag fretted uprights of the railed back, whose 'Chinese Double Brac'd Paleing' corresponds to a pattern in William Halfpenny's 'Twenty New Designs of Chinese Lattice', 1750; the same fret pattern also fills the seat-rail. A related pair of chairs with only minor differences, together with four flowered-rail chairs, were sold by a descendent of Edward Weld, Christie's, London, 5 December 1991, lots 232-234. A single chair, lacking its Chinese paling, was sold from the collection of Christopher Gibbs, Clifton Hampden, Oxfordshire, Christie’s house sale, 25–26 September 2000, lot 204. Other variants of the design at Lulworth are illustrated in Ralph Edwards, The Dictionary of English Furniture, 2nd edn., 1954, Vol. I, p. 286, figs. 189-190.

Furniture designs feature in the surviving sketch-books of the Bastard workshop, which during this period was managed by John (c. 1688–1770) and William (c. 1689–1766), two of the six sons of the firm’s founder Thomas Bastard (d. 1720) (Howard Colvin, Dictionary of British Architects 1660–1840, 2nd edn., 1978, pp. 96–98, with family tree showing three generations of the Bastard family); and this Lulworth set has been attributed to the sculptor-carver William Bastard (d. 1772), who furnished the Grand Jury Room at Dorchester in 1754. The same firm, listed as John & William Bastard, are noted as supplying furniture in 1756 to John, 4th Duke of Bedford and marked ‘To go to Camp’: the Duke was in camp as a militia commander during the summer of 1756 (C. Gilbert & G. Beard, eds., The Dictionary of English Furniture Makers 1660-1840, Leeds, 1986, p. 48). Certain constructional features of these chairs denote their manufacture outside of London, notably the choice of timbers – walnut for the show-wood (when mahogany would have been usual in London) and ash for the seat rails (instead of beech).