A pair of George III giltwood armchairs by B. Harmer, circa 1785

The present pair of armchairs - together with the three following lots – are conceived in the fashionable French antique taste of the 1770s and formed part of a grand suite of giltwood seat furniture almost certainly supplied to James Milnes (d.1805) for Thornes House, Wakefield. A wealthy cloth merchant, Milnes employed the Yorkshire architect John Carr (d.1807) between 1779 – 81. The front elevation and plan for Thornes Hall were included in George Richardson's New Vitruvius Britannicus in 1802, pls. 51 – 53 and, according to Richardson, Thornes House was amongst Carr’s favourite designs. The rooms were decorated with delicate stuccowork in the tradition of Robert Adam and the furniture supplied would have been intended to compliment the refined neoclassical interiors (see B. Wragg, The Life and Works of John Carr of York, York, 2000, p.213, and pls. 231 and 232).

The suite was made by the enigmatic B. Harmer, an unidentified cabinetmaker who produced many high quality pieces of fashionable seat furniture in the late 18th and early 19th century. He – or she - is not recorded as having a workshop, implying Harmer might have been a journeyman working for larger firm on an ad-hoc basis, a model employed by several 18^th century firms including Gillows. Among the pieces known to be by Harmer are a set of hall chairs at Petworth, a magnificent suite of dolphin seat furniture attributed to Marsh and Tatham from Powderham Castle (sold Christie's, London, 5 July, 1990, lots 50 and 51 and on 5 December, 1991, lots 222 and 223) and an X-framed chair corresponding exactly to a design published in Thomas Hope's Household Furniture and Interior Decoration (1807) (sold Sotheby’s New York, 27 October 2017, lot 105).

The idiosyncratic use of carton carton-pierre inserts for the paterae to the armrests and guilloche borders of the seat rails is highly unusual and points to workshop with a broad range of specialisms. It is conceivable Harmer was working closely with Carr and larger workshop who presumably supplied Thornes House with other pieces of exquisite furniture. A small number of pieces with Thornes House provenance have come on the market and include a pair of George III painted satinwood dining-room pedestals with silver plate vases by Boulton and Fothergill (bearing the arms of James Milnes and his wife Mary Busk, that must date to circa 1778) which sold Christie's, London, 10 April 1975, lot 49 and a pair of George III satinwood and marquetry demi-lune card tables and another similar card table which sold Bonhams, London 11 March 2015, lots 124 and 125.