Live Auction 8011The Gothick Pavilion - A Private Collection from Belgravia
A LARGE MAHOGANY OPEN ARMCHAIR
Lot 240

A LARGE MAHOGANY OPEN ARMCHAIR

OF GEORGE II STYLE, CIRCA 1910, ATTRIBUTED TO SIDNEY LETTS

Closed26 January 2011

Price Realised

GBP 8,750

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A LARGE MAHOGANY OPEN ARMCHAIR
OF GEORGE II STYLE, CIRCA 1910, ATTRIBUTED TO SIDNEY LETTS
The panelled back and arms carved with scrolled eagle's heads, above a caned seat, on mask-headed cabriole legs and claw-and-ball feet with castors
39½ in. (100.5 cm.) high; 30¾ in. (78 cm.) wide

The late H.J. Joel, Esq., The Stud House, Childwick Bury, Hertfordshire, sold Christie's London, 1 April 1993, lot 171.

Specialist note

This chair is copied from the architect Sir John Soane's 'Chippendale chair', displayed at his museum in Lincoln's Inn Fields; and it forms part of a suite of related seat-furniture discussed by Eben Howard Gay in his Chippendale Romance, New York, 1915 (R.W. Symonds, 'Furniture in the Soane Museum', Country Life, 27 January 1950, pp. 220-1). Its serpentine frame is embellished with arabesque satyr masks emerging from bacchic lion feet and with garland-bearing eagle's heads in the 'antique' manner promoted by William Kent, Master Carpenter to King George II. The voluted cartouche splat derives from engravings by Johann Lauch (fl. 1724-57), such as were plagiarised in Thomas and Batty Langley, The City and Country Builder's and Workman's Treasury of Designs, 1740.