A Set of Six George I Walnut and Marquetry Side Chairs, Circa 1720

Possibly supplied to Sir Fulwar Skipwith, 2nd Baronet (1676-1728) at Newbold Revel Hall, Warwickshire, c.1716, and thence by descent to Sir Gray Humberston d'Estoteville Skipwith, 11th Bt of Prestwould (1884-1950), Honington Hall, Warwickshire;

By repute, Percival Griffiths Collection, Sandridgebury, Hertfordshire, England;

Kent Gallery, London;

Myron C. Taylor Collection, New York, sold Parke-Bernet Galleries, New York, 3-5 November 1960, lot 381.

Percy Macquoid & Ralph Edwards, The Dictionary of English Furniture, London 1924, Vol. I, p.224 fig. 62 (one illustrated)

The coat of arms on the splats of this suite represents Skipwith impaling Dashwood, and as such likely refers to Sir Fulwar Skipwith, 2nd Baronet who in 1703 married Mary, daughter of Sir Francis Dashwood, 1st Baronet (c.1658-1724). He served as a member of Parliament for Coventy from 1713 to 1715 and in 1716 he commissioned the building of Newbold Revel at Stretton-under-Fosse in northern Warwickshire, and it is possible this set of chairs was commissioned as part of the original furnishing of the house. Following the death without issue of the 4th Baronet Sir Thomas George Skipwith (c.1735-1790), MP for Warwickshire, the estate was inherited by a member of a related branch of the family, Sir Grey Skipwith, 8th Baronet of Prestwould (1771-1852), who had been born in the colony of Virginia. It then passed by descent to Sir Grey Humberston d'Estoteville Skipwith, 11th Bt who through marriage in 1905 had acquired Honington Hall outside Stratford-upon-Avon, where the present set of chairs were recorded in the first quarter of the 20th century.

The distinctive hipped or 'broken' cabriole legs on hoof feet first appeared in English chair design in the early 18th century in a set of japanned hall chairs supplied to Gregory Page, Director of the East India Company, and this form was also employed by the royal joiner James Moore for a set of gilt gesso chairs made for the state rooms at Blenheim Palace, Oxfordshire before 1722, as well as a suite of chairs and armchairs sent to Streatlam Castle, County Durham in c.1720 (Adam Bowett, Early Georgian Furniture 1715-1740, Woodbridge 2009, p.154-55 plates 4:16, 4:18 and 4:19). As Bowett points out, there was no precedent for this type of leg in contemporary French designs, and the form may have been inspired by late Ming or Early Qing Dynasty furniture. A further set of chairs incorporating broken cabriole legs with hoof feet and inlaid with strapwork marquetry almost identical to that of the present lot was formerly at Brynkinalt Castle, Denbighshire, possibly originally supplied to Sir Trevor Roper at Trevor (later Powis) House, Knightsbridge in London and sold Sotheby's London, 19 January 2017, lots 333-335. This group has been attributed to the London workshop of Thomas and Richard Roberts, whose prestigious clients included the Royal Household and Sir Robert Walpole at Houghton Hall, Norfolk.

When the present set of chairs last appeared at auction at Parke-Bernet in 1960, they were said to have formed part of the celebrated collection of furniture acquired by Percival D. Griffiths at Sandridgebury, Hertfordshire under the guidance of the author and scholar R. W. Symonds; to date however no documentary or photographic evidence has come to light to substantiate this provenance (we are grateful to Christian Jussel for confirming this). At the time the chairs were part of the estate of the New York industrialist, diplomat and philanthropist Myron C. Taylor (1874-1959), a trustee of the Metropolitan Museum of Art who was involved in behind-the-scenes efforts to acquire the Griffiths Collection for the Museum following Griffiths's death in 1937 which did not come to fruition, and this might provide an explanation as to how the uncorroborated association between Griffiths and the Skipwith Chairs arose (see Christian Jussel, English Furniture 1680-1760. The Percival D. Griffiths Collection, New Haven and London 2023, Vol. I p.36-37).