CIRCA 1755

The chair's bold carved chanelled feet can be compared to the suite supplied to John, 2nd Earl Poulett (d.1764) for Hinton House, Somerset. A pair of library chairs from the suite was sold in these Rooms, 16 October 1998, lot 333. While the Poulett papers are incomplete, several leading London cabinet-makers, probably working under the supervision of the architect Matthew Brettingham, can be associated with the commission on the basis of documented designs or similarities to known works. Current research has associated the Hinton House suite with Messrs. William Vile (d.1767) and John Cobb (d.1778), later Royal cabinet-makers to George III, who formed a powerful syndicate with William Hallett (d.1781) in St. Martin's Lane from 1753. Vile and Cobb supplied a set of closely related side chairs to Anthony Chute for the Vyne, Hampshire in that same year, one of which is illustrated in A. Coleridge, Chippendale Furniture, London, 1968, fig. 27.

A set of six nearly identical side chairs from the Governor's Palace at Colonial Williamsburg was sold in these Rooms, 23 October 1982, lot 181.