A pair of George III mahogany 'Gothick' armchairs, circa 1765, after a design by Thomas Chippendale

Mallett, March 1998  

The distinct categories of the concurrent decorative styles in the eighteenth century often intermingled freely, creating chairs that had elements of mutually contrasting styles like ‘Gothic’, ‘Chinese’ and ‘French’: this can be witnessed on the touches of Chinese-influenced blind fretwork and Rococo C-scrolls that are incorporated into these otherwise clearly Gothic chairs. Historical styles were also often treated more freely than the more academically precise designers of the nineteenth century, meaning that medieval source material was moulded into an expressive ‘Gothick’ that is playful, daring, elegant and unmistakeably Georgian. The Gothic basis for the present lot was popular in the pattern books that are our main printed source for the period, and similar ‘Gothick’ examples employing strong vertical rhythm in the pierced backs can be seen in Genteel Household Furniture in the Present Taste, pl.15, in Chippendale’s Gentleman and Cabinet-Maker’s Director, pl.XXI and XXII and Manwaring’s Cabinet and Chair-Maker’s Real Friend and Companion, pl.13 (all pictured in E. White, Pictorial Dictionary of British 18^th Century Furniture Design: The Printed Sources, Woodbridge, 1990, pp.63, 72 and 79). Their cross-cross arrangement recalls the geometric lattice-back chairs often by the same designers and workshops. A pair of side chairs with the same backs and closely similar brackets and stretchers, though without blind fret-work to the legs, sold at Sotheby’s London, Mario Buatta: Prince of Interiors, 25 January 2020, lot 756. A similarly trellis-like interpretation of the ‘Gothick’ sold at Christie’s London, 13 November 1997, lot 49.