Oliver Cornish
Sale Coordinator for Furniture, Sculpture, Rugs & Tapestries
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Selected Furniture from a West Country Estate
Lot 19TP
A George III 'Gothick' mahogany open armchair After designs by Robert Manwaring and certainly influenced by a Thomas Chippendale design, with restorations
5 July 2024, 14:00 BST
London, New Bond StreetSold for £8,320 inc. premium
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Thomas Moore
Head of Department
A George III 'Gothick' mahogany open armchair
After designs by Robert Manwaring and certainly influenced by a Thomas Chippendale design, with restorations
The square back with re-entrant upper angles and blind fretwork rails of elongated double-sided cusped arches interspersed with quatrefoils, the open rose form splat comprised of a central rosette encompassed by eight radiating flared cusped arches, with matching arms and with associated gros and petit needlework seat upholstery, on cluster column front legs terminating in block feet, with splayed square section rear legs, largely re-railed, one original section of the railing remains, approximate depth of the seat: 52cm, 68cm wide x 94 cm high.
The square back with re-entrant upper angles and blind fretwork rails of elongated double-sided cusped arches interspersed with quatrefoils, the open rose form splat comprised of a central rosette encompassed by eight radiating flared cusped arches, with matching arms and with associated gros and petit needlework seat upholstery, on cluster column front legs terminating in block feet, with splayed square section rear legs, largely re-railed, one original section of the railing remains, approximate depth of the seat: 52cm, 68cm wide x 94 cm high.
Footnotes
In 1754, a 'Gothick' fretted parlour chair was invented for the author, antiquarian, academic, collector and connoisseur Horace Walpole for his castellated villa, Strawberry Hill, in Twickenham. In the same year Thomas Chippendale issued patterns for related 'Chinese' railed chairs in his seminal publication, The Gentleman and Cabinet-Maker's Director, pl. XXIII.
Subsequently, the third edition of Chippendale's Director, published in 1762, features an engraving, itself dating to 1761, of a 'Gothick' chair with a similar cusped 'rose' splat to that on the present lot, pl. XXV. Alongside this design Chippendale notes that it would be 'proper for a library'. This same plate also appears in Pictorial Dictionary of British 18th Century Furniture Design, compiled by E. White, 2000, Woodbridge, p. 67.
However, the offered example, with its distinctive rose window form splat and elegant cluster column legs, is arguably more closely related to a 'Gothick' design executed by Robert Manwaring. This Manwaring drawing is illustrated in the c.1765 second edition publication by the London based 'Society of Upholsterers' called Genteel Household Furniture in the Present Taste, pl. 15. Indeed, the latter is replicated in Pictorial Dictionary of British 18th Century Furniture Design, op. cit., pl. 15.
Two further comparable models of 'Gothick' chair designs which originally appeared in Robert Manwaring's 1765 publication, The Cabinet and Chair-Maker's Real Friend and Companion, pl.'s 14 and 15, also again feature in the Pictorial Dictionary, op. cit., pl.'s 14 and 15, p. 79.
An identical armchair to the offered lot sold Christie's, London, Important English Furniture, 14 June 2001, lot 29. A pair of very closely related chairs, of the same approximate date and likewise evidently after a Manwaring design, sold Christie's, New York, 16 April 2002, Important English Furniture, lot 3. Another chair of this general type sold Christie's, London, 26 February 1981, lot 60. Whilst a set of eight, including two armchairs, which have similar quatrefoil panelling to their frames sold Enniskerry, Co.Wicklow, Ireland, Christie's house sale, 23 January 1978, lot 97.