ATTRIBUTED TO EPHRAIM STAHL, EARLY 19TH CENTURY

With their characteristic structure and ornamentation, these elegant chairs and sofa are closely related to works of the celebrated cabinet-maker and Master of the Stockholm Furniture-Makers' Guild Ephraim Stahl (d.1820). Stahl delivered pieces for the courts of King Gustav IV Adolf, Karl XIII and Karl XIV Johan, and his pieces can be found in a number of royal Swedish residences, such as the Royal Palace in Stockholm and the castles of Gripsholm, Tullgarn, and Rosersberg.
The present chairs are related to those in Prince Fredrik Adolf’s Inner Salon at the Royal Palace in Stockholm, illustrated H. Groth, Neoclassicism in the North, Swedish Furniture and Interiors 1770 - 1850, London, 1990, p. 26-27, fig. 10. The Inner Salon was decorated in the Pompeian style in 1794 and was furnished by pieces based on antique bronze examples and introduced by Stahl in the 1790s.
The Grecian scrolled settee’s laurel-wreathed frame is guarded by the chimerical griffin, a mythical creature sacred to Apollo, which also served as the badge of Karl XIV Johan of Sweden (d.1818). The griffin was introduced on the furniture designed for him for Rosersberg around 1800 under the direction of the Rome-trained architect Gustaf af Sillen. The pattern of orb-capped columnar legs found on the present examples originally derived from an engraving of a sphynx-guarded seat in C. Percier and P. Fontaine's, Recueil de Décorations Intérieures, 1801, and it also appears on other seat-furniture at Rosersberg, see ibid., figs. 135 and 138. A related settee and two chairs are in the collection of the Nordiska Museet, Stockholm, Sweden (Inv. 35,648 and 71.966) and illustrated S. Wallin, Nordiska Museets Möbler Från Svenska Herremanshen, Stockholm, 1935, p. 132, figs. 1124-1127 .