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Lot Essay
This suite of chairs, sofas and stools (lots 79, 80 & 81) feature the distinctive foliate-wrapped legs carved with oblong trellis panels and guttae feet, as well as the fine rosette-carved edge moulding found on the celebrated drawing-room suite commissioned by Anthony Ashley-Cooper, 4th Earl of Shaftesbury (d. 1771) for St. Giles's House, Dorset, now known as the St. Giles's suite. The St. Giles's suite of saloon furniture originally comprised four settees and at least twenty-five open armchairs. For many years the manufacture of the suite was credited to Thomas Chippendale, and they are the epitome of the 'Modern' style promoted in his Director, combining Roman and French tastes. Indeed, the 7th Earl of Shaftesbury (d. 1885), in a memorandum written in the mid-19th Century, described them as being 'very valuable and fine, being by Chippendale'. However, the suite is now attributed to William Vile (d. 1767), who worked with William Hallett (d. 1773) before receiving his appointment as 'cabinet-maker' to George III. Vile adopted guttae feet for the stools which he and his partner John Cobb supplied for the Vyne, Hampshire, invoiced in March 1753 as - '8 large mahogany stools with carv'd feet and carv'd brackets' (A. Coleridge, Chippendale Furniture, London, 1968, p. 27, fig. 28). The attribution also derives from the superb carving of the suite, which is filigreed in the intricate manner adopted by architectural model makers and corresponds to the fashion adopted by George III and Queen Charlotte for the furnishings supplied by Messrs. Vile and Cobb for the Royal residences including St. James Palace and the Queen's House, now Buckingham Palace.
The reason for the removal and subsequent reattachment of the feet of the chairs remains a mystery. Indeed, it is an odd, but perhaps not unknown, practice - as this was also the case with the pair of mahogany sofas attributed to Paul Saunders and supplied to John Spencer, later 1st Earl Spencer (1734-83), probably for Spencer House, London, Wimbledon Park, Surrey or Althorp, Northamptonshire (see The Spencer House sale, Christie's London, 8 July 2010, lot 1037).
Harleyford Manor, situated on the banks of the River Thames in Buckinghamshire, was built from a design by the architect Sir Robert Taylor for William Clayton (d. 1783), second son of Sir William Clayton, 1st Bt. (d. 1744), who had bought the earlier house and land in 1736. Sir Robert Taylor pulled down the earlier manor house in 1755, and replaced it with the design that still exists today.
The reason for the removal and subsequent reattachment of the feet of the chairs remains a mystery. Indeed, it is an odd, but perhaps not unknown, practice - as this was also the case with the pair of mahogany sofas attributed to Paul Saunders and supplied to John Spencer, later 1st Earl Spencer (1734-83), probably for Spencer House, London, Wimbledon Park, Surrey or Althorp, Northamptonshire (see The Spencer House sale, Christie's London, 8 July 2010, lot 1037).
Harleyford Manor, situated on the banks of the River Thames in Buckinghamshire, was built from a design by the architect Sir Robert Taylor for William Clayton (d. 1783), second son of Sir William Clayton, 1st Bt. (d. 1744), who had bought the earlier house and land in 1736. Sir Robert Taylor pulled down the earlier manor house in 1755, and replaced it with the design that still exists today.