A pair of walnut side chairs, c. 1755, from a set of ten, two of which are made in mahogany

Eighteenth-century chairs of this type, with comfortable upholstered backs and seats and richly-carved legs, were carefully designed to be admired in rooms of entertainment or reception, and were often termed 'Parlour chairs'. They were often designed with a flat top rail, to sit flush at the level of, or just below the moulded dado-rail (sometimes called a chair-rail) in a richly-decorated reception room in an English house - in both the countryside or in the city. When not in use, the chairs would be placed along the walls, and only brought into the centre of the room when required for use.

The chairs' design is close to a set of armchairs made around 1755 for St Giles's House, Anthony Ashley-Cooper, 4th earl of Shaftesbury's magnificent house at Wimborne St Giles in east Dorset. The house - and its interiors - have often been hailed as a paragon of the harmonious combination of Palladian and rococo design, a seemingly contradictory combination. It is often held that the rococo emerged from Palladianism: the fanciful French-ness of the rococo showing itself as a stark contrast to the often gloomy and austere interiors and design associated with Palladian architecture, captured in Colen Campbell's encyclopaedic volumes of Vitruvius Britannicus.

However, as is often the case today, patrons selected objects which at the time were either in current fashion, or designs which they found attractive. In the case of St Giles's, the house was built by Henry Flitcroft (d. 1767) and Stephen Wright (d. 1780) and was furnished in the 1750s. Dr Richard Pococke visited St Giles's in October 1754 and noted that it had been 'lately finished in a very elegant manner' (Richard Pococke, James Joel Cartwright, The Travels through England of Dr Richard Pococke, 1889, p. 137). Although no cabinet-maker's name has been firmly attached as a maker for this or the chairs which were at St Giles's, the suite of seat furniture (comprising at least twenty-four armchairs and four settees) has been attributed to the London maker, William Vile (1700-1767). The attribution depends on a similar design of guttae feet found on six stools at The Vyne, Hampshire, made by William Vile in 1753.

There are payments from the 4th earl of Shaftesbury for furniture made by the cabinet-maker William Hallett (d. 1781) who was paid £167 for 'carved chairs' in February 1745. There are further payments for lesser amounts, for a bed, a mahogany cistern, a mahogany commode and for other unspecified items, dated 1746 and 1752. William Hallett was, according to a letter from Vile dated 1749 his master, and from the late 1750s until the late 1760s, he was a financial backer of the partnership of Vile and Cobb.

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Literature: 

'Harleyford, Buckhinghamshire, A Seat of Sir William Clayton, Bt.', Country Life, 4 June 1910, p. 817 (three chairs illustrated in the Library).