Details
Comprising six side chairs and two bergeres, each with padded back and seat covered in blue cotton, the bergeres with outscrolled arms, on spindle-turned cluster-column legs with stretchers and brass castors, four chairs with fragmentary printed labels: '9', '20', '22', '24', restorations and replacements
The armchairs: 39½ in. (100.5 cm.) high; 28 in. (71 cm.) wide; 21 in. (53.5 cm.) deep;
The side chairs: 39½ in. (100.5 cm.) high; 24½ in. (62 cm.) wide; 17½ in. (44.5 cm.) deep

Provenance
Anonymous sale, Christie's, London, 30 November 2000, lot 154.
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Lot Essay

The distinctive cluster-column leg featured on the present dining-chairs appears on designs for chairs and tables as early as the 1750s. First published in Mathias Darley's New Book of Chinese, Gothic and Modern Chairs(1751), the style was subsequently popularized by Thomas Chippendale's 'Chinese Chairs' in The Gentleman and Cabinet-maker's Director, 1754, plate XXIII (see P. Ward-Jackson, English Furniture Designs of the Eighteenth Century, London, 1958, plate 46). Other firms, such as Mayhew and Ince and Gillows promoted variations on the same theme. Between 1759 and 1762, William Ince and John Mayhew published 'Writing & Reading Tables' and 'Card Tables' with similar columnar legs in The Universal System of Household Furniture. In 1761 Gillows delivered a related table to Ralph Bell of Thirsk Hall, and in 1763 he delivered a set of fourteen dining-chairs to Thomas Clifton of Lytham (Susan E. Stuart, Gillows of Lancaster and London 1730-1840, Volume I, London, 2008, pp. 143 and 251).

Further related cluster-column legs appear on several pieces of furniture of the period including a supper table sold Christie's, New York, 12 October 1996, lot 268 ($48,300 including premium), a pair of side-chairs sold Christie's London, 9 July 1992, lot 129 (£23,100 including premium) and a pair of open armchairs, sold Christie's London, 1 July 2004, lot 17 (£33,460 including premium). Similar legs are found on a mahogany side table, urn stands and a number of silver tables including one sold Christie's London, 20 September 2001, lot 113 (£10,575 including premium) (see F. Lewis Hinckley, The more significant Georgian Furniture, New York, 1990, plate 67).

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