A PAIR OF GEORGE III SOLID MAHOGANY ARMCHAIRS

These elegantly-serpentine chairs, designed in the Louis XV manner, relate to the fashionable 'French' or 'cabriolet' chairs of the 1760s and 70s such as were illustrated by Thomas Chippendale in his Gentleman and Cabinet-Maker's Director, 1762, pl. XXIII, and Thomas Malton in his Compleat Treatise on Perspective, 1775, pl. XXXIII, fig. 131.
The present chairs are similar to a group of armchairs which have very similar curvilinear form and gadrooned borders traditionally associated with John Cobb (d.1778) of St. Martin's Lane, 'upholsterer' to King George II from 1761 in partnership with William Vile (d.1767). A set of six mahogany chairs with gadrooned moldings was supplied by Cobb in the 1770s to Philip Yorke for Erdigg, Wales. Another from the Leidesdorf Collection was sold Sotheby's New York, 28 June 1974, lot 138, while another set of six was exhibited by Mallett at the Grosvenor House Art & Antiques Fair, 1997.