AFTER A HEPPLEWHITE DESIGN

Details

A SET OF FOUR GEORGE III MAHOGANY OPEN ARMCHAIRS
After a Hepplewhite design
Each with a pierced shield back with stylised foliate trails within the channelled frame and sprays to the spandrels, the reeded rails with stiff-leaf capitals and a half-sunflower medallion to the base, the outscrolled arms with rosette terminals above a padded seat covered in yellow floral silk-damask, on rosette-headed square tapering channelled legs and block feet, restorations to the seat-rails (4)

Literature

C. Claxton Stevens and S. Whittington, 18th Century English Furniture, The Norman Adams Collection, rev. ed., Woodbridge, 1985, p. 80 and col. pl. 11 ('These examples are particularly fine ones for their shaping and the restrained but exquisite carving.')

Special notice

No VAT will be charged on the hammer price, but VAT at 17.5% will be added to the buyer's premium which is invoiced on a VAT inclusive basis

Lot Essay

The chairbacks are of Grecian pelta-shield form with palm-flower splats radiating from a sunflower medallion and derive from a 'bar-back' sofa pattern published in A. Hepplewhite & Co.'s Cabinet-Maker and Upholsterer's Guide, 1788, pl. 26, and on a 'Camel back stay rail' chair featured in the late 1780s archives of Gillows (L. Boynton, ed., Gillow Furniture Designs 1760-1800, Royston, 1995, fig. 260). A chair with closely-related back is illustrated in J. Kirk, American Furniture and the British Tradition to 1830, New York, 1982, no. 1053.
An armchair of the same pattern, but lacking the smallest decorative details, is illustrated in H. Cescinsky, English Furniture from Gothic to Sheraton, New York, 1937, p. 343.
A chair with the same form of back, guilloche-edged and on turned legs, is illustrated in R. Edwards and P. Macquoid, The Dictionary of English Furniture, London, rev. ed., 1954, vol. I, p. 294, fig. 218.

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