The preservation of the minutely recorded bills of Thomas Roberts, chairmaker and supplier of the majority of seat furniture for the Royal Palaces in the last quarter of the seventeenth century, has provided historians with a remarkably accurate chronology for the dating of seat furniture throughout this period. Adam Bowett, in 'The English “Horsebone” Chair, 1685–1710', The Burlington Magazine CXLI (May 1999), pp. 263–270, investigates the term "horsebone," used in Roberts’ bills from 1686 to 1704. He identifies it as referring to leg and arm supports with “a pronounced knee over a sharp break and a reverse curve,” derived from French and Netherlandish prototypes, and proposes a revised chronology for English chair design based on this definition. Bowett identifies 1693, when Roberts’ bills first mention “2 Elbow Chaires of Wallnuttree Carved horsebone on the corners”, as marking the emergence of the angled-leg form seen on the present stool. This style peaked around 1700 and is most famously exemplified in Queen Anne’s 1702 coronation throne, now at Hatfield House. The term "horsebone" vanishes from Roberts’ records after 1704, indicating its decline soon after Anne’s accession.
The dating of the present stool is further supported by its highly distinctive design of its cut-through and leaf-capped knees, which are strikingly similar to the legs of a small group of known walnut armchairs all dating circa 1700. Most salient is a caned example inscribed with the date “1699” and carved with the arms of the Cann family, sharing precisely the same scheme of piercing and carving on both its legs and arm-supports, today preserved in the Burrell Collection, Glasgow (inv. no. 14.159). Although the present upholstered stool will not have been made en suite with the caned chair, its inscription dates it in the center of the years during which Roberts used the term, and suggests that our stool was made around the same time, if not even by the same workshop.
The pierced legs also compare to two near-identical suites of upholstered armchairs, both possibly by Roberts himself. The first suite was probably supplied to Charles, 4th Earl and 1st Duke of Manchester (ca. 1662-1722) for Kimbolton Castle, Huntingtonshire. The total complement of chairs originally commissioned is unknown, though photographs taken by Country Life in 1911 record two in the White Hall of the Castle and two in King William’s Bedroom. Two were subsequently sold by His Grace the Duke of Manchester, O.B.E, Sotheby's, London, 18 May 1973, lot 37 and later from the Collection of Robert Hatfield Ellsworth, Christie’s, New York, 21 March 2015, lot 1281.
The second related suite was commissioned probably from the same workshop, by Sir Robert Davers, 2nd Bt. (1653-1722) for his estate at Rushbrooke Hall, Suffolk. At least ten are extant: eight which are now in the collection of the Lady Lever Art Gallery, Liverpool (inv. nos. LL 4094-4056), with five of these on loan to Hampton Court since 1992; and two now in the Treasurer’s House, York (illustrated A. Bowett, English Furniture, 1660-1714: From Charles II to Queen Anne, Woodbridge, 2002, p. 240, pl. 8:20). The cut-through legs also appear on the state bed from Rushbrooke, en suite with the armchairs, formerly in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum, New York and most recently sold Sotheby’s, London, 3 July 2012, lot 19. For a detailed study of the Rushbrooke suite, see L. Wood, The Upholstered Furniture in the Lady Lever Art Gallery, Liverpool, 2008, I, cat. no. 5, pp. 121-132.
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