NOT SOLD (BIDDING OVER)
0.00USD+ applicable fees & taxes.
This item WAS NOT SOLD. Auction date was 2002 Jun 11 @ 11:00UTC-08:00 : PST/AKDT
property of various owners A PAIR OF EARLY GEORGE III MAHOGANY OPEN ARMCHAIRS attributed to John Cobb, Circa 1765, Each frame molded and gadrooned overall, each arched cartouche-shaped back en cabriolet, flanked by outcurved armrests with scrolled handrests, on inverted cabriole supports, above a serpentine seat, on cabriole legs with scrolled feet, each headed by an acroteria $30,000-40,000 The french style Thomas Chippendale first presented the French rococo style in England and his influential publication, The Gentleman and Cabinetmaker’s Director, 1754, conveyed the essential features of this furniture intended for the Drawing-Room, or Salon, and Dining Room. His designs for French chairs do not replicate Gallic models, which were not meant to be faithfully copied, but used as a point of departure for translation into the English idiom. Nonetheless, a “French” chair should have an upholstered back enclosed by a carved border, separ- ation between the backrest and the seat to provided lightness, and cabriole legs with scrolled toes, all features found on the present chairs. On the present armchairs, the fine, watery-gadrooned serpentine frames would originally have been mirrored in the close-nailed upholstery and related in character to the “cabriole” chair in Thomas Malton’s Compleat Treatise on Perspective, 1775, pl. xxxiii. Moreover, the “acroteria” knees adorned with a stylized palmette betray the influence of the French Grecian style. john cobb The present chairs belong to a group of seat furniture traditionally associated with the celebrated cabinetmaker John Cobb (d. 1778) of St. Martin’s Lane, “upholsterer” to George III from 1761 in partnership with William Vile (d. 1767). The names of Vile and Cobb first appear in The London Directory in 1750, continue until 1765, and from 1766 until his death 12 years later, Cobb appears alone. He is recorded as an upholsterer and it is as such that he appears in the Royal accounts until Vile’s retirement in 1764. Vile was a cabinetmaker and their partnership was the normal one for a cabinetmaker and an upholsterer, making possible the statement by Vile in his will that he now is “engaged with my co-partner John Cobb in very extensive branches of trade.” Probably no English cabinet-maker of the 18th century so well understood the rococo style of the French ebenistes as Cobb, and he produced a series of commodes and tables in the French manner of unrivaled elegance. twenty-one virtually identical chairs from the group, including one in giltwood, are known in the following contexts: • Lenygon, Francis. Furniture in England from 1660 to 1760, London, 1914, fig. 101, coll. no. 54 (Lenygon and Co. Ltd.) (single?). • Harris, Moss. The English Chair, London, 1937, p. 140, pl. LXX (pair). • Symonds, R. W.. “The French Style in English Furniture,” Antique Collector Vol. 21 (July/August 1950), fig. 6 (Phillips of Hitchin) (single?). • Nickerson, David. English Furniture of the 18th Century, London, 1963, p. 80, fig. 83 (Marinotti Collection) (single). • Leidesdorf collection (sold Sotheby’s New York, June 28, 1974, lot 138) (single) • International CINOA Exhibition. Ex. cat. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1974, p. 217, no. 212 (Mallet) (pair). • The Collection of Marjorie Wiggin Prescott (sold Christie’s New York, January 31, 1981, lot 323, $42,000), paris. • Christie’s London, June 23, 1983, lot 162 (four). • Synge, Lanto. Mallett’s Great English Furniture, London, 1991, fig. 143 (pair). • Christie’s London, November 19, 1992, lot 58 (giltwood single). • Christie’s London, July 9, 1992, lot 68 (pair). • Sotheby’s London, July 17, 1998, lot 174 (pair).
Auction Location:
United States
Previewing Details:
Friday June 7, 2002 , Monday June 10, 2002
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