Name: WHITE Digital Agency
Price range: $

All artworks

Pair of Regency Rosewood and 'Buhl' Marquetry Antiquarian Side Chairs, c. 1810-15

Exhibited by Thomas Coulborn & Sons

Material Solid rosewood, mahogany, rosewood veneer, lacquered brass, copper, pewter, tortoiseshell, and caning

Dimensions 93.25 x 49.5 x 49 cm

Place of Creation England

Status Vetted

About the Work

The form of these chairs is inspired directly by the form of a ‘back stool’ which dominated chair designed in 17th Century England. Literally a stool with a back; the legs are straight with no rake or shaping, with low stretchers all around for strength. This rigid, rectilinear form was in stark contrast to the various fashions in the 18th Century for cabriole and later swept legs, and appeared simpler and earlier in date. Equally the rope-twist turned decoration on the legs, stretchers and spindles is a direct reference to 17th Century design. This antique taste is often associated with the antiquarian, art collector and novelist, Horace Walpole (1717-97), who, in addition to having an ‘imaginative engagement with the past’, strove for the ‘authentic’ historical object and for quality craftsmanship in his antiquarian purchases (Davis, p. 28). Amongst the furniture he acquired for Strawberry Hill were some 17th Century Anglo Indian ebony chairs which Walpole believed to be English from the Tudor period (based on similar chairs he had seen at Esher Place which had previously been owned by Cardinal Wolsey). It is striking how similar the form of the Talbot chairs is to the Walpole ebony chairs; while both are clearly derived from the English 17th Century prototype it is tempting to wonder if the designer of the Talbot chairs was influenced by Walpole’s Anglo-India versions (see image of Anonymous engraving of an Ebony Chair Formerly Belonging to Horace Walpole at Strawberry Hill [Accession no. LDORL : 00230, Ionides Collection, Orleans House Gallery, Twickenham]).

In 100 British Chairs (Adam Bowett p.74) Walpole’s antiquarianism is noted as ‘an intellectual novelty’ and that the ‘next generation included the fabulously wealthy William Beckford (1760-1844) and the Scottish writer Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832)’. The emergence of these chairs, which are being offered for sale for the first time since they were made, adds another important antiquarian patron to their number. The precise details of the commission remain unknown, but it is clear that Charles Chetwynd Talbot, 2nd Earl Talbot, was an aesthete and an antiquarian with a great interest in improving his ancestral home who considered this antiquarian design appropriate for furnishing ancient interiors like the Jacobean rooms at Ingestre Hall (Wainwright, p. 251). Ingestre Hall was a Jacobean mansion built by Earl Talbot’s ancestor, Sir Walter Chetwynd (d. 1638), in 1613. Considerable alterations were made to Ingestre during Earl Talbot’s tenure. Between 1808-1813 and 1817-1821, John Nash (1752-1835), one of the foremost British architects of the Georgian and Regency eras, remodelled parts of the exterior and interior. Nash’s ‘Elizabethan’ style was seemingly ‘loyal in spirit and detail’ to the original Jacobean mansion, and the chairs offered here must surely have been intended to complement the Elizabethan interiors (Summerson, p. 50). See more information at www.coulborn.com

Show moreless

Provenance

Commissioned by the 2nd Earl Talbot of Hensol (1777 – 1849) circa 1810-15, for Ingestre Hall, Staffordshire
3rd Earl Talbot of Hensol and 18th Earl of Shrewsbury (1803 – 1868) at Ingestre
4th Earl Talbot of Hensol and 19th Earl of Shrewsbury (1830 -1877) at Ingestre
5th Earl Talbot of Hensol and 20th Earl of Shrewsbury (1860 – 1921) at Ingestre
6th Earl Talbot of Hensol and 21st Earl of Shrewsbury (1914 – 1980) at Ingestre until the Hall was sold in 1960
7th Earl Talbot of Hensol and 22nd Earl of Shrewsbury, Staffordshire