A GEORGE II MAHOGANY ARMCHAIR

The design for this armchair is based on a drawing for a 'French Chair' first published by Thomas Chippendale (d.1779), in his Director of 1754. The design's popularity endured and it remained in the third edition of 1762, pl.XXI, where Chippendale describes how this chair type is intended 'to be open below at the Back: which makes them very light, without having a bad Effect' (op.cit, p.4).

An armchair with a similar cartouche-shaped back is in the Victoria & Albert Museum, illustrated in The Shorter Dictionary of English Furniture (R. Edwards, 1964, p.151, fig.136), and Chippendale Furniture (A. Coleridge, 1968, fig.179). A pair of armchairs of this pattern was exhibited by Hyde Park Antiques at the Antique Dealers' Fair, Grosvenor House, London, 1990.