A George III Faux Bamboo Painted Settee Circa 1770

Sold, Christie’s, New York, January 24, 1997, lot 359

‘Bamboo’ furniture such as this sofa, which is actually turned beech with a japanned surface decorated to simulate the natural cane, appears to have first become fashionable in England in the late 1760s, some ten years after the publication of William Chamber’s Designs of Chinese Buildings, Furniture, Dresses, Machines and Utensils, in 1757. Plates XIII and XIV which illustrate ‘chairs, stools and tables; made sometimes of rose-wood, ebony, or lacquered work, and sometimes of bamboo only, which is cheap, and nevertheless very neat’. Suites of seat furniture, such as the present sofa were almost certainly commissioned for bedrooms, similar chairs japanned in white and green, being commissioned by David Garrick for the ‘Chinese Bedroom’ at his Hampton villa (Walkling, Bamboo Furniture, fig. 27. p. 38). Also intended for bedrooms were the '10 bamboo chairs with loose seats’ which were delivered by John Linnell to William Drake at Shardeloes in May 1767 (Hayward and Kirkham, William and John Linnell, p. 101, fig. 58). Another similar suite was commissioned by Sir Gilbert Heathcote, Bart., from Thomas Chippendale in 1768, the account dated June 20 including ‘6 India back and arm Chairs japand to imitate the Bamboe & pincushion seats stuff’d in Canvas to be cover’d with Needlework  9 9 – ', together with ‘6 extraordinary loose cane seats 1  4' (Christopher Gilbert, The Life and Work of Thomas Chippendale, p. 250). The present sofa was probably also originally fitted with a ‘loose cane seat’ which would have been painted to complement the japanned decoration.

The fashion for furniture of this type continued into the 19^th century, Thomas Sheraton stating in his Cabinet Dictionary, 1803, that bamboo is ‘a kind of reed, which in the East is used for chairs. These are in some degree, imitated in England, by turning beech into the same form, and making chairs of this fashion, painting them to match the colours of reed and cane’. 

See:

Similar settees

Anonymous sale, Osmond Tricks, Clifton, October 17, 1989
Subsequently sold, Christie’s, London, April 19, 1990, lot 63

Property of a Texas collector, sold Christie’s, New York, February 2, 1991, lot 202

Washington Antiques Show, 1993, Catalogue, Advertisement, Gary E. Young, Maryland

Mr. Chambers, Architect, Designs of Chinese Buildings, Furniture, Dresses, Machines, and Utensils, 1758

Country Life, July 19, 1946, ‘Bamboo Furniture’, Margaret Jourdain, p. 115

Christopher Gilbert, The Life and Work of Thomas Chippendale, London, 1978

Gillian Walkling, Antique Bamboo Furniture, 1979,

Helena Hayward and Pat Kirkham, William and John Linnell, London, 1980