MID-18TH CENTURY

Details

A PAIR OF GEORGE II MAHOGANY 'WINDSOR' ARMCHAIRS
MID-18TH CENTURY
Each with a shaped toprail above a vase-shaped splat and spindles and with serpentine arms on curving supports, above a solid saddle seat, on cabriole legs headed by scrolls and with pad feet
40 in. (102 cm.) high; 32.5 in. (83 cm.) wide; 26 in. (66 cm.) deep

Special Notice

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Sale Room Notice

The comparable examples listed for this lot are all single examples:
25 November 2004, lot 220, a single (£23,900 incl' premium)
23 November 2006, lot 150, a single (£36,000 incl' premium)
22 November 2007, lot 651, a single (£36,500 incl' premium)
Most recently another single was sold from the important collection of Sir Albert Richardson, P.R.A., Christie's, London, 18-19 September 2013, lot 31 (£32,500 incl' premium).

Brought to you by

Peter Horwood

phorwood@christies.com +44 (0)20 7389 2359

Lot Essay

These armchairs correspond to designs for provincial 'Windsor' chairs and are related to a 1750s pattern executed by Richard Hewett at Slough, (see N. Goyne Evans, 'A History and Background of English Windsor Furniture', Furniture History, 1979, pp. 24-53, pl. 84), though it should be noted that being made in fine mahogany they are very likely to have been the work of a fashionable London chair-maker. Collectively they form a consistent group known through trade advertisemants and auction sales and which may originally have formed a larger set; a pair was advertised by C. Fredericks & Son of Old Brompton Road in Apollo, June 1970, another single (with the lower splat inverted) was sold Christie's, London, 22 April 2004, lot 29 (£45,410). Others, all sold Christie's, London, include:
25 November 2004, lot 220, a single (£23,900 incl' premium)
23 November 2006, lot 150, a single (£36,000 incl' premium)
22 November 2007, lot 651, a single (£36,500 incl' premium)
Most recently another single was sold from the important collection of Sir Albert Richardson, P.R.A., Christie's, London, 18-19 September 2013, lot 31 (£32,500 incl' premium).
A related set of at least eleven fine mahogany and padouk 'Windsor' chairs, conceivably by the same maker, line the marble hall at Holkham Hall, the Norfolk seat of the Earls of Leicester. A possible link between the Holkham chairs and this chair comes in the form of an example illustrated in M. Harding-Hill, Windsor Chairs, Woodbridge, 2003, p. 76, which combines the legs and shaped back of the offered chair with the two tier spindle-back (omitting the central splats) of the Holkham chairs.

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