A SET OF SIX GEORGE II WALNUT SIDE CHAIRS

The present chairs are related to a set of six in the Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania by the celebrated Clerkenwell cabinet-maker and upholsterer Giles Grendey (d. 1780), two of which carry labels 'GILES GRENDEY, In St. John's-Square, Clerkenwell, LONDON, Makes and Sells all Sorts of Cabinet- Goods, Chairs and Glasses' (illustrated C. Gilbert, Pictorial Dictionary of Marked London Furniture 1700-1840, Leeds, 1996, p. 242, fig. 434). A further labelled suite of similar seat-furniture by Grendey and formerly in the collection of the late J. S. Phipps, was sold at Sotheby's New York, 21 November 1981, lots 233-235. The Carnegie and Phipps chairs differ in that they are more elaborately carved on the chair back - carved paterae and scrolling foliage on the upper part of the splat, and shell moulding on the toprail. Interestingly, one of the Carnegie chairs is stamped 'IC' on the seat-rail and two of the Phipps chairs 'IC' and 'ID', presumably for individual chair-makers in the Grendey workshop. The present lot is stamped 'IL', which together with stylistic considerations, particularly the similarity of the carved supports of these chairs and the Carnegie examples, points to a Grendey attribution.