A pair of George I black-Japanned and Chinese black and gilt lacquer hall chairs circa 1720, with late 18th/early 19th century modifications

each bearing an ivorine Stair and Company label. Restorations to decoration.

Stair and Company, New York

The present hall chairs with their Chinese lacquer backs and seats are nearly identical to a set of four hall chairs supplied in the 1720s to Sir Robert Walpole at Houghton and to a set of twelve chairs supplied in the ealy 19th century George, Prince of Wales at Brighton Pavilion.  The Houghton chairs with their gilt-gesso seat rails and legs were possibly made by James Moore, Royal cabinet-maker for George I for Houghton where they remained until the early 20^th century, being acquired by Philip Sassoon for Trent Park in 1935, and then brought back to Houghton by his sister the Countess of Rocksavage after his death in 1939.  A pair of these chairs was sold at Christie’s, London, from Trent Park March 29, 1984, lot 103 (illustrated G. Beard and N. Goodison, English Furniture 1500-1840, Oxford, 1987, p. 60, fig. 3 and illustrated, E. Lennox-Boyd, Masterpieces of English Furniture: The Gerstenfeld Collection,London, 1998, pp. 106, 206, no. 30).  The other pair was sold from Houghton Hall at Christie’s,London, December 8, 1994, lot 110.

The set of twelve side chairs supplied to the Prince of Wales at Brighton Pavilion are illustrated by Augustus Pugin before 1820 in the corridor of the pavilion (illustrated, J. Morely, The Makiong of the Royal Pavilion Brighton, Boston, 1984,  and now in the Royal Collection at Buckingham Palace (illustrated H. Clifford Smith, Buckingham Palace, London, 1931, plate 316).  It has been suggested that the chairs supplied to Brighton Pavilion were probably adapted from chairs made in the first quarter of the 18^th century which removed the gilt-gesso aprons and legs replacing them with either bamboo cluster column legs, as seen on the Brighton Pavilion examples, or neo-classical straight legs headed by acanthus leaves as seen on the present chairs.
There are two other sets of hall chairs made during the 1720s for me with strong connections to the East India Company, namely Sir Gregory Page, Bt. of Greenwich (1668-1720) who was the director and later chairman of the company and Sir William Heathcote, Bt. (1693-1751), second son of Samuel Heathcote, who was a director of the company.  Both the Heathcote and Page suites have lacquered backs with japanned seats and legs, the assumption being that the backs were made in Canton and shipped to England where the frames were made and japanned.  The sending of European made goods to China to be lacquered is well documented and because of the excess cargo space on the journey toChina, the freight was relatively inexpensive (Adam Bowett, English Furniture, 1660-1714, from Charles II to Queen Anne, Woodbridge, 2002, pp. 147-149).  A pair of the Heathcote chairs most recently sold at Sotheby's London, November 29, 2002, lot 152 (£96,850) and a pair of the Page chairs most recently sold at Christie's London, November 15, 1990, lot 69 (illustrated, Adam Bowett, Early Georgian Furniture, 1715-1740, Woodbridge, 2009, p. 154, plate 4:16).