A PAIR OF EARLY GEORGE III BLACK AND GILT-JAPANNED ARMCHAIRS

With their elaborately fretted backs and pagoda-form crest-rails these charming chairs illustrate the full flowering of 'Chinese' design as popularized by Thomas Chippendale in his The Gentleman and Cabinet-Maker’s Director (1754-1762), whose far-reaching influence has led to the term 'Chinese Chippendale'. They are based on designs for 'Chinese Chairs' in plates 26-28 of the Director and relate closely to a chair in mahogany in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (Kennedy Fund, 1918), illustrated in A. Coleridge, Chippendale Furniture, London, 1968, fig. 192. Indeed, the taste for all things 'Chinese' led to many cabinet-making firms fulfilling orders for clients based on Chippendale's designs. A twin chair-back settee at Upton House, Warwickshire (NT 446444) also in mahogany shares a nearly identical pagoda-form crest-rail and very similar fretwork back, 'bamboo' legs, and corner spandrels. The additional japanned decoration on this pair of chairs is intended to imitate Asian lacquer, and takes the full-fledged chinoiserie theme a step further. They would have been perfectly suited for a fashionable 'Chinese Room' in the 18th century.