Chippendale Straight Chairs
CHAIRS — Chippendale, straight leg
For convenience of comparison, this page discusses only examples with straight legs. Some of Chippendale’s finest examples in fact utilised the cabrioles. Many of the backs are slightly lower and the seats slightly wide on some of the very good examples. The prosperous second half of the eighteenth century saw a proliferation of designs and some highly decorative workmanship. Styles include Gothic and Chinese and effects such as riband were used.
A superb museum quality example with top quality splat, the stretchers have pierced frets, and the rest, except the back legs, is blind fretted. Odd chairs of almost this quality can still occasionally be found.
A good Chippendale chair, whose finely carved top rail and decoration on the splat give it style. The legs are moulded and decorated with carefully carved notches, and the boldness of the four intertwining loops in the
splat corresponds to a design in Ince and Mayhew’s Universal System, 1759-1763.
Set of six $12, 000 — 15, 000
A chair of considerably less quality, it has moulded legs and an elegant and reasonably intricate splat, but the top rail lacks carved motifs and the effect is one of solid comfort rather than impressiveness.
An almost country interpretation of the design; the Chippendale splat and legs are there but the main decoration comes from the curl at the extremities of the top rail and the base of the splat, hangovers from the pre-Chippendale period . Compare the design of the splat with those of the three preceding examples. The interlaced strands are a bit close at the top and meet the top rather than flow from it. The chair is in walnut which supports the country made provenance.
Note may not be aesthetically a success but financially it makes the grade. It is precisely this lack of equation between quality and price that makes it essential for the collector to learn to discriminate. c.1770
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