A set of twenty George I style walnut and parcel-gilt dining chairs, early 20th century

These chairs are early-twentieth-century copies of a well-known suite of chairs made for Houghton Hall in Norfolk. Commissioned by Sir Robert Walpole, later 1^st Earl of Orford (1676-1745), the originals were placed in the ‘Cabinett’ and ‘Cov’d or Wrought Bedchamber’ and are most likely to date from the period before William Kent’s involvement with the interior. The suite is well-documented, appearing in several key publications on the history of furniture such as the seminal Dictionary of English Furniture by Macqquoid and Edwards (p.260, fig. 105),¹ and examples of the original suite are pictured in situ multiple times in the chapter on Houghton in H. Avray Tipping's English Homes (1921)² and also in a 1987 article in Country Life.³ Examples of the model are also held in several important museum collections. The V&A, for instance, has several versions, including an original that is on loan and displayed in Houghton Hall itself (W.17:1, 2-2002). There is also a pair at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York (60.134.1 and 60.134.2) and a single example at the National Gallery of Victoria (340.1-D5).

At auction, a group of the original suite appeared at Sotheby’s London, 29^th January, lot 117, and another pair appeared at Christie’s London on 8^th December 1994 at the Houghton sale, lot 126.

¹ Percy Macquoid and Ralph Edwards, The Dictionary of English Furniture, vol I, revised edn. 1924-27, p.260, fig.105.

² H. Avray Tipping, English Homes; Period V--Vol I: Early Georgian, 1714-1760, 1928, London, pp.98, 100, 135, figs. 124, 127, 135.  

³ John Cornforth, ‘Houghton Hall, Norfolk – II’, Country Life, 7^th May 1987, p.107, fig. 8.