拍品专文
The chairs, with French-stuffed 'cabriolet' backs, are conceived in the George III 'antique' fashion, and relate to the white and gold armchairs commissioned in the early 1780s for Audley End, Essex and supplied by the Aldersgate cabinet-maker and upholsterer Francis Gilding (d. 1796) (J. Cornforth, 'Audley End, Essex - II', Country Life, 3 January 1991, p. 41, fig. 8).
While their Roman-tablet and antique-fluted frames are wreathed in 'Venus' pearls after the 'Etruscan' fashion, their Grecian-scrolled and Grecian-fretted arms are raised on Grecian-urn pilasters. Evoking lyric poetry, Apollonian palms flower their corner tablets and wreath the hollowed capitals of their columnar legs. A related pattern, described as 'in the newest taste' featured in Thomas Sheraton's, Cabinet-Maker and Upholsterer's Drawing Book, 1791-4 (pl. 32 of Part III). Their frames are likely to have been japanned white with gilt enrichments in the French manner, and a design for a similar tablet-back chair in Gillows' contemporary Drawing Book is also noted as being 'japanned' (L. Boynton, Gillow Furniture Designs 1760-1800, Royston, 1995, pl. 32).
While their Roman-tablet and antique-fluted frames are wreathed in 'Venus' pearls after the 'Etruscan' fashion, their Grecian-scrolled and Grecian-fretted arms are raised on Grecian-urn pilasters. Evoking lyric poetry, Apollonian palms flower their corner tablets and wreath the hollowed capitals of their columnar legs. A related pattern, described as 'in the newest taste' featured in Thomas Sheraton's, Cabinet-Maker and Upholsterer's Drawing Book, 1791-4 (pl. 32 of Part III). Their frames are likely to have been japanned white with gilt enrichments in the French manner, and a design for a similar tablet-back chair in Gillows' contemporary Drawing Book is also noted as being 'japanned' (L. Boynton, Gillow Furniture Designs 1760-1800, Royston, 1995, pl. 32).