Lot 37: Office of Sir William Chambers (1723-1746)

Design for a hall stove
brown and black ink and grey and brown wash, unframed
13 3/4 x 10 1/2 in. (35 x 26.8 cm.)

This George III design for a triumphal-arched stove with a column is in the French/antique fashion popularised in the 1770s by the court architect Sir William Chambers (1723-1746). With its enflamed cassolettes and poetic laurels festooned from paterae and a shell-decked keystone, it also relates to the work of the court architect John Yenn (d.1821), who was employed by Chambers from 1776 as a clerk of works at Somerset House. Related veil-draped cassolettes feature on a set of shell-decked pier-tables designed by Chambers in 1773 for Blenheim Palace; and the latter in turn relates to a Yenn design for a laurel-festooned table (H. Roberts, 'Furniture for the 4th Duke of Marlborough', Furniture History, pp.117-149 fig 7; and P Ward-Jackson, English Furniture Designs of the Eighteenth Century, London, 1958, fig. 261.). Chambers included similar acanthus-sccrolled pilasters on his bookcase design of the mid 1760s for The Hoo, Hertfordshire (see J. Harris and M. Snodin, Sir William Chambers, London, fig. 246).

No VAT will be charged on the hammer price, but VAT at 17.5% will be added to the buyer's premium which is invoiced on a VAT inclusive basis