Each with triple-arched padded back edged with rosette-carved moulding leading to scrolling arms, the seats each with squab cushion and three scatter cushions, covered in celadon silk damask decorated with baskets of flowers, on square legs carved with rounded rectangular panels of flower-filled trellis and wrapped with carved foliage, fruit and acorns, on guttae feet and headed by pierced 'Chinese' angle brackets, the outline of the arms and backs possibly altered, one sofa with one and the other with two back legs replaced, some replacements to the edge moulding and angle brackets
37¹⁄₄ in. (94.5 cm.) high; 84³⁄₄ in. (215 cm.) long; 33 in. (84 cm.) deep

Presumably supplied to William Clayton, circa 1760, for Harleyford Manor, Marlow, Buckinghamshire.
By descent to Sir Harold Clayton, Bt.
Sold by him and the Trustees of the will of Lady A.G. Clayton, Christie's London (Spencer House), 20 July 1950, lot 84 (part - 235 Guineas to M. Turner).
David Style, Esq., Wateringbury Place, Maidstone, Kent (The Drawing Room); sold Christie's house sale, 31 May 1978, lot 244 (part).
Anonymous private collection sale 'East & West'; Christie's, London, 2 May 2013, lot 79 (where offered with the en suite chairs included in this sale).

Three chairs from this suite: 'Harleyford, Buckhinghamshire, A Seat of Sir William Clayton, Bt.', Country Life, 4 June 1910, p. 817, illustrated in the Library.

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Lot Essay

These sofas formed part of a suite of seat furniture, along with the set of chairs (included in this sale) and at least three stools (previously sold), which feature the distinctive foliate-wrapped legs carved with oblong trellis panels and guttae feet, as well as the fine rosette-carved edge moulding found on the celebrated drawing-room suite commissioned by Anthony Ashley-Cooper, 4th Earl of Shaftesbury (d. 1771) for St. Giles's House, Dorset, now known as the St. Giles's suite. The St. Giles's suite of saloon furniture originally comprised four settees and at least twenty-five open armchairs. For many years the manufacture of that suite was credited to Thomas Chippendale as they are the epitome of the 'Modern' style promoted in his Director, combining Roman and French tastes. Indeed, the 7th Earl of Shaftesbury (d. 1885), in a memorandum written in the mid-19th Century, described them as being 'very valuable and fine, being by Chippendale'. However, the suite is now attributed to William Vile (d. 1767), who worked with William Hallett (d. 1773) before receiving his appointment as 'cabinet-maker' to George III. Vile adopted guttae feet for the stools which he and his partner John Cobb supplied for the Vyne, Hampshire, invoiced in March 1753 as - '8 large mahogany stools with carv'd feet and carv'd brackets' (A. Coleridge, Chippendale Furniture, London, 1968, p. 27, fig. 28). The attribution also derives from the superb carving of the suite, which is filigreed in the intricate manner adopted by architectural model makers and corresponds to the fashion adopted by George III and Queen Charlotte for the furnishings supplied by Messrs. Vile and Cobb for Royal residences including St. James Palace and the Queen's House, now Buckingham Palace. For the three stools from this suite previously sold, see: anonymous private collection sale 'East & West'; Christie's, London, 2 May 2013, lots 80 & 81.

Harleyford Manor, situated on the banks of the River Thames in Buckinghamshire, was built from a design by the architect Sir Robert Taylor for William Clayton (d. 1783), second son of Sir William Clayton, 1st Bt. (d. 1744), who had bought the earlier house and land in 1736. Sir Robert Taylor pulled down the earlier manor house in 1755, and replaced it with the design that still exists today.