Mahogany open armchair with oval back and cabriole legs.
Identifier
FPF177
Title
Mahogany open armchair with oval back and cabriole legs.
Date
1770-1780
Description
Mahogany open armchair with oval back and cabriole legs, the seat and back upholstered.
Full Description
This armchair has an upholstered oval back within a fluted mahogany frame, with the crest carved with a rosette, husk festoons and acanthus leaves. The back frame is continuous with the back legs. The stuff-over seat has a serpentine-front and is curved at the sides and back. The short down-swept moulded arms have pads on the horizontals and meet down-swept moulded supports rising from the front legs. The seat rail is fluted and the front rail is carved with a central rosette and husks. The chair is raised on moulded cabriole legs at the front with carved festoons on the knees, while the back legs are moulded and flared. The yellow damask and webbing upholstery is 20th century.
This chair is in the Louis XV-style, made fashionable in the mid-1760s by French Royal chair-makers such as Jean-Baptiste Tilliard (1686-1766), maître in 1717, and menuisier du Garde-Meuble du Roi from 1728. The oval back in chairs is one of the earliest embodiments of the neo-classical style. The first known representation of an oval-back chair is in Pierre-Antoine Baudouin's engraving, Le Lever, published in 1765. Tilliard, together with his contemporary Louis Delanois, was pre-eminent in the use of oval backs in the early 1760s, confirmed by a miniature chair by Tilliard which was acquired by the 6th Earl of Coventry from the marchand-mercier Simon-Phillippe Poirier between 1763-68 (Jervis, 2011).
This chair is an English rendition of the French prototype. Although British furniture makers like John Linnell (1729-96) favoured combining an oval back with straight legs, designs in the Victoria & Albert Museum show that Linnell was initially making oval back chairs with cabriole legs in c. 1770-75 (Hayward, Kirkham, 1980).
This chair is in the Louis XV-style, made fashionable in the mid-1760s by French Royal chair-makers such as Jean-Baptiste Tilliard (1686-1766), maître in 1717, and menuisier du Garde-Meuble du Roi from 1728. The oval back in chairs is one of the earliest embodiments of the neo-classical style. The first known representation of an oval-back chair is in Pierre-Antoine Baudouin's engraving, Le Lever, published in 1765. Tilliard, together with his contemporary Louis Delanois, was pre-eminent in the use of oval backs in the early 1760s, confirmed by a miniature chair by Tilliard which was acquired by the 6th Earl of Coventry from the marchand-mercier Simon-Phillippe Poirier between 1763-68 (Jervis, 2011).
This chair is an English rendition of the French prototype. Although British furniture makers like John Linnell (1729-96) favoured combining an oval back with straight legs, designs in the Victoria & Albert Museum show that Linnell was initially making oval back chairs with cabriole legs in c. 1770-75 (Hayward, Kirkham, 1980).
Condition
Feet cut down.
Repair to top of right arm, and underside of right arm, two wood plugs.
Damage to carving on front left seat rail.
Repairs to chair back
New supporting brackets under seat rail.
Repair to top of right arm, and underside of right arm, two wood plugs.
Damage to carving on front left seat rail.
Repairs to chair back
New supporting brackets under seat rail.
Materials
Mahogany.
Upholstery.
Upholstery.
Physical Dimensions
H. 94
W. 61
D. 64
W. 61
D. 64
Marks
Underside, right arm, incised ‘VIII’.
Underside, seat rail, incised ‘XIIII’.
Underside, seat rail, incised ‘XIIII’.
Parker Numbers
Painted under seat rail: ‘177/3691’.
Plastic label inside seat rail: ‘OM 3691’.
Plastic label inside seat rail: ‘OM 3691’.
Provenance
Purchased by Frederick Parker & Sons prior to 1914 from Charles for £26.10.0.
Notes
Simon Swynfen Jervis, ‘Miniature Furniture and Interiors’, Furniture History Society Newsletter, November 2011, p. 4.
H. Hayward, P. Kirkham, William and John Linnell: Eighteenth Century London Furniture Makers, London, 1980, vol. II, pp. 44-45, figs. 86, 86a.
H. Hayward, P. Kirkham, William and John Linnell: Eighteenth Century London Furniture Makers, London, 1980, vol. II, pp. 44-45, figs. 86, 86a.
