A SET OF TWELVE MAHOGANY DINING-CHAIRS

The arch-crested parlour chairs are designed in the George II Roman manner with Ovidian ornament celebrating the triumph of Venus, and with splats displaying voluted truss-pilasters that are fretted and scalloped with antique flutes. Roman foliage embellishes the confronted waves of the Vitruvian fretted ribbon-guilloche, which wreath the rails, and yet more foliage issues from scalloped brackets on serpentined legs terminating in Bacchic lion-paws. Their design can be attributed to the famed Clerkenwell 'Cabinet-Maker and Chair-Maker' Giles Grendey (d. 1780), as his label features on a set of twelve related claw-legged chairs (with Christopher Gibbs Ltd.), recalling Jupiter's attendant eagle and cup-bearer Ganymede, and displaying the same patterned backs (C. Gilbert, Pictorial Dictionary of Marked London Furniture 1700-1840, Leeds, 1996, p. 242, fig. 435).

The provenance of Thomas Hilliard has been put forward for these chairs and as yet our research has not been able to confirm that a Thomas Hilliard lived at Writon Hall, nor the location of Writon Hall.