A PAIR OF REGENCY EBONISED, PARCEL-GILT AND LEATHER UPHOLSTERED STOOLS, CIRCA 1820-30 |

each with a padded leather oblong seat, string tassel fringe and set on four parcel gilt and ebonized fluted and turned legs, with a moulded H-stretcher

William Beckford, possibly Fonthill Abbey, Wiltshire and later Lansdown Tower, Bath
Very possibly part of the set of '6 [ebonised] seats' delivered by English and Son between October and December 1846 to his daughter and son-in-law, the Duke (Alexander, 10th Duke) and Duchess of Hamilton for either their Portman Square house in London or Easton Park, Suffolk
by descent to Mary Louise Graham (nee Douglas-Hamilton), Duchess of Montrose, 1884-1957, and thence by descent to the current owner.

New York, The Bard Graduate Center for Studies in the Decorative Arts, Design and Culture, William Beckford 1760-1844 : An Eye for the Magnificent, 18 October 2001-6 January 2002.
London, The Dulwich Picture Gallery, William Beckford 1760-1844 : An Eye for the Magnificent, 5 February 2002-14 April 2002.

English, E., & Son, Hume, R., Inventory and Valuation of all the Household Furniture, Gold and Silver plate, plated Articles, China, Glass, Linen, Paintings, Prints and Drawings, Wearing Apparel, Jewels, Curiosities, Coins, Bronzes, Marbles and Ornaments, Wines, Horses, Carriages, Farming and Garden Stock and Implements of Husbandry at Nos. 19 & 20 Lansdown Crescent, Bath. The Tower on Lansdown and Farm and premises all adjoining - The Property of the late William Thomas Beckford Esq., 13th September 1844, possibly 2 from the following group listed in p.69, '2 window seats covered in scarlet leather, fringed etc.' in the Belvedere at the tower;
Ostergard, D.E. (ed)., William Beckford 1760-1844 : An Eye for the Magnificent, Yale University Press, 2001, p. 400, no. 147.

Overall in good conserved condition. Leather upholstery later. Rubbing and wear to ebonised frame which in places reveals underlying timber. Chips and loses to parcel gilding which has been refreshed in places. Evidence of old worm which is apparently no longer active. Generally with minor old marks and scratches consistent with age.
"In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective, qualified opinion. Prospective buyers should also refer to any Important Notices regarding this sale, which are printed in the Sale Catalogue.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF BUSINESS PRINTED IN THE SALE CATALOGUE."

There is a good deal of mystery surrounding the collections built and lost by William Beckford in the early 19^th century. The chairs and stools which form the following three lots are no different and it is a challenge to place their acquisition accurately amongst the melee of building, acquiring and auctions that constituted Beckford’s life in the 1820’s. A connoisseur, antiquarian and sophisticated collector, Beckford was among a great cohort of similar enthusiasts of his time, Walpole, Soane, Hope, intrigued and influenced by the past whilst passionate about collecting, designing and building. The set of twelve chairs and pair of matching stools, almost certainly of the design referred to as the ‘Fonthill pattern’ appear in many of the artist Willes Maddox’s interiors of Lansdown Tower. Maddox depicts them in the Scarlet and Crimson Drawing rooms and the Sanctuary, whilst the armchairs appear in Edmund F. English’s Views of Lansdown Tower Bath(1844), where one chair of this model appears in the overtly staged depiction of ‘Ornamental Furniture from Mr. Beckford’s Collection’ described as ‘TWO BLACK ANTIQUE SHAPED ELBOW CHAIRS, with gilt ornaments, the backs and seats covered with crimson morine, with silk fringe’. Whether these  formed part of the original furnishings of Beckford’s remarkable abbey in Wiltshire will most likely remain conjecture as the descriptions of the furniture in the 1822-3 auction catalogues are not detailed enough to ascertain with total certainty, but English’s description may suggest an earlier acquisition. Indeed the set of twelve chairs may well be those described in Phillips’ thirty-seven day sale of the contents of Fonthill Abbey in 1823 as ’12 ebonised ditto [chairs], backs and seats, stuffed with hair, covered with red morocco leather and silk fringe’. We know that Beckford bought back some of his favoured possessions in that sale and had them moved to Bath so this is a plausible suggestion.

It is further interesting to note in support of the current seat furniture having originated at Fonthill, that in John Rutter’s Delineations of Fonthill and its Abbey of 1823, a group of eight X-framed stools conceived in the antique manner, similar to that of the current armchairs, are seen in The Grand Drawing Room demonstrating that this form of furniture was not foreign to Beckford’s taste at this time. Beckford was certainly very aware of the interiors that the great Regency designer Thomas Hope had created in his Duchess Street mansion, indeed he had even considered Hope to be a potential future son-in-law at one stage, and there is an undeniable correlation between the current armchairs and that depicted in plate XX of Hope’s Household Furniture and Interior Decoration of 1807 and the example in the Royal Pavilion Brighton, whilst the stools are of very similar form to those illustrated by Hope in plate VI.

The ‘antique’ design of both the armchairs and the side chairs and stools reflecting both classical antiquity and in the case of the fluted legs to the chairs and stools the renaissance taste, would have appealed greatly to Beckford’s sensibilities. The ebonised surface of this furniture would have been in keeping with the oriental lacquer and earlier pieces of ebony furniture Beckford is known to have collected which we now know originally emanated from the Coromandel Coast of India or Batavia some of which is illustrated in situ in John Britton’s Graphical and Literary Illustrations of Fonthill Abbey of 1823. Such pieces were highly prized by the bibliophile collectors of this period, attracted by their early origins (see Sotheby’s London, 3 May 2018, lot 130 for a pair of ebony cabinets which were possibly at Fonthill).

Whether this seat furniture was originally commissioned by Beckford and with every possibility designed by him, for Fonthill or Lansdown Tower is open to conjecture. What makes them so important however, in the history of English furniture, is the design, an early example of the antiquarian taste, a precursor to the more widely adopted historicism that was to pervade furniture design more prevalently in the nineteenth century. The group truly demonstrates the sophisticated taste of one of England’s most celebrated connoisseur collectors, a visionary and a gentleman responsible in part for a revival that was to dominate rest of that century.

Following Beckford’s death in 1844, this group of furniture passed to his daughter and son-in-law, Alexander, 10^th Duke of Hamilton (1767-1852) who, like Beckford, was a passionate collector. He often vied with his father-in-law over purchases and it serves as a further testament to Beckford’s taste that these were amongst the possessions that the Duke added to his collection.