The set of six George III giltwood side chairs made by Thomas Chippendale for Brocket Hall, £95,000 at Dreweatts.
Part of a sale titled Town and Country featuring the contents of two properties, they went to a UK private buyer for £95,000 (plus 25% buyer’s premium), towards the top estimate of £100,000.
Thomas Chippendale’s commission for Sir Penistone Lamb, 1st Viscount Melbourne (1748 - 1819) at Brocket Hall in Hertfordshire was delivered in a concentrated period from about 1772-75.
One of the set of six George III giltwood side chairs made by Thomas Chippendale for Brocket Hall, £95,000 at Dreweatts.
The neoclassical giltwood seat furniture he made for the Drawing Room at Brocket originally comprised 12 armchairs, 12 side chairs and four settees, which is the largest salon suite Chippendale provided for any client.
Designed specifically for entertaining royalty, the Grand Saloon project at Brocket Hall cost £1500 which equated to more than the cost of a substantial mansion at the time. James Paine, the only architect to subscribe to Chippendale’s 1754 Director, oversaw the project and may have played some part in the design of the suite.
The model is an adaptation of one Chippendale used at Harewood.
Paine illustrated some of the Chippendale furnishings at Brocket in his publication Noblemen and Gentlemen’s Houses of 1783. Although the property changed hands in 1922 (selling to Sir Charles Nall-Cain), the giltwood suite remained at the house after Sir Charles bought all its elements at the five-day contents sale that followed. When Country Life photographed Brocket Hall in 1925, not only was the 28-piece suite complete, but its original crimson floral damask was still intact.
A detail of one of a set of six George III giltwood side chairs made by Thomas Chippendale for Brocket Hall, £95,000 at Dreweatts.
The various elements were eventually dispersed in the late 20th century. Two settees and four armchairs were sold in 1994; two settees and four more armchairs were sold in 1995; and the four remaining armchairs were sold in 1999. A pair of torcheres from Brocket Hall sold for £400,000 as part of Christie’s Chippendale sale in 2018.
Dreweatts’ side chairs – since regilded and reupholstered in a floral silk – were bought by the vendor as a set of four from Partridge Fine Art and later reunited with two others from the collection of Lord Weinstock, Bowden Park. They came for sale in Newbury from a London house titled the Wimpole Street collection.
They came for sale from a London house titled the Wimpole Street collection.
