English, circa 1685 – 1695, possibly by Thomas Roberts

Each upholstered in close-nailed crimson foliate cut-velvet with gold and crimson fringing, with egg-and-dart and foliate carved outscrolled arms with scroll terminals and foliate carved scroll supports, on foliate-wreathed and garlanded cherub-headed corner ‘horsebone’ legs joined by a scrolling cross-stretcher.

These stately bedroom apartment seats, sculpted with flowers and Roman foliage and intended for shell-scalloped and richly fringed upholstery, are designed in the Louis XIV Roman fashion, that was later popularized by the engraved Oeuvres of the Paris-trained architect Daniel Marot (d. 1752). Their Roman truss-scrolled and wave-voluted pillars comprise laurel-festooned Cupid herms that serve as guardians for their stretcher-trays’ sacred urns and evoke poetic concepts of sacrifices at Love’s altar in antiquity. The chair feet would harmonise with the bed feet, such as the Cupid altar-tripods bearing the Duke of Lauderdale’s bed in the state apartment he introduced in 1672 at Ham House, Surrey under the direction of the gentleman architect William Samwell (d. 1676). The Lauderdale pattern had recently been adopted for a velvet bed commissioned around 1682 for Sarah, Duchess of Somerset (d. 1686)1.

Related Cupid herms feature on contemporary French-fashioned bedroom chairs, with japanned and golden frames, that accompanied the ‘North’ state bed later brought from London to Glemham Hall, Suffolk2. The latter in turn display reclined and fame-trumpeting Cupids on their stretchers, such as provide the rails for ‘richly carved’ bedroom chairs commissioned by James II in 1688 from the court joiner and carver Thomas Roberts (d. 1714), who was established in Marylebone in 1686 at the sign of ‘The Royal Chair’3.

These chairs are part of an extensive suite undoubtedly from a highly important aristocratic commission – now long dispersed and whose origins remain as yet unrecorded. One of the chairs, with a grey and gold-painted scheme later applied over the original japanned decoration, was formerly in the celebrated Moller Collection formed under R.W. Symonds. It was sold at Sotheby’s, London, 28 May 1982, lot 71 and featured in Symonds’ Furniture Making in 17th and 18th Century England, 1955 (fig. 127). Another with same decoration as the Moller chair, was in the Tritton collection at Godmersham Park, Kent, sold Christie’s house sale, 6-9 June 1983, lot 137. Another further pair with grey and parcel-gilt decoration were with Mallett, illustrated at Bourdon House, in their 1987 Yearbook.

Related References:

1.A. Westman, ‘The Redisplayed State Bed at Dunham Massey’, Historic House & Collections Annual, 2008, pp. 14 – 21
2H A Tipping, English Homes, Period IV, vol,1 p. 408).
3A. Bowett, English Furniture: 1669 – 1714, Woodbridge 2002, pp.102-5