Footnotes

• This pattern referred to by the Gillow firm as the 'three upright splat chair' was a popular design with several variations appearing in the Gillows archives. The original design is thought to date from around 1780 with refinements being made, possibly by Robert Gillow in London, around 1791 when a more sophisticated version appears in the Gillow Coloured Sketch Books. The design was clearly one which Gillows sought to protect and when they supplied chairs of this pattern to the Liverpool based upholsterers and transatlantic exporters in 1780, the firm stipulated:
  
  'If this pattern should take wth you of wch, have no doubt, we rely upon yr. honor (sic) that would will not put it into any other chair maker's hands as we would rather have without this order than give a new pattern away'.
  
  (See S.Stuart, Gillows of Lancaster and London 1730-1840, Suffolk, 2008, Vol I., p.177).
  
  The model appears with varying carved details depending on the cost of the model orders and both with and without stretchers. A related armchair with the addition of a fluted leg and cross-rail is illustrated in S.Stuart, ibid., p.177, pl.140.

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Category: Furniture / English Furniture and Works of Art

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