Description
A Georgian mahogany Cockpen open armchair in the Chinese Chippendale taste.
English, George III period – mid 18th century – circa 1760.
Of good colour and patination. Unusually with a slightly bowed top rail. Castors and lovely upholstery later.
Sturdy in the joints and in excellent condition throughout.
Literature:
Christopher Gilbert ‘The Life and Work of Thomas Chippendale’ p. 101, fig. 167.
Ralph Edwards CBE FSA in ‘A Shorter Dictionary of English Furniture’, p. 150, ill. 132, documents a similar armchair dated circa 1765.
‘English furniture’ by Thomas Arthur Strange, pp. 133, 156 & 157.
Thomas Chippendale ‘Director’, ill. XXVI.
Percy Macquoid, ‘A History of English Furniture, The Age of Mahogany’, London (1908) ill. 682.
Ralph Edwards CBE FSA ‘Georgian Cabinet-Makers’, London (1955) p. 136, fig. 88.
Sebastian Pryke ‘Cockpen Quest’ Country Life, 29th April, 1993.
Sebastian Pryke ‘The 18th Century Furniture Trade in Edinburgh’ [sic].
Named after pew chairs with a Chinese lattice design in the Cockpen Church, Cockpen, Midlothian, Scotland, cockpen chairs were originally made for the aristocratic Dalhousie family, circa 1775.
The master cabinet-maker Thomas Chippendale provided chairs of this form for Normanton Park, Rutland, and also Harewood House, West Yorkshire.
