Untitled
attributed to Thomas Chippendale (Otley 1718 - London 1779)
Category
Furniture
Date
1771 - 1772
Materials
Limewood, beech, gesso, gold leaf, silk damask
Place of origin
England
Order this imageCollection
Saltram, Devon
NT 871318
Summary
A set of twenty pieces of giltwood seat furniture comprising eighteen open armchairs (NT 871318.2.1 - 18) and two sofas (NT 871318.1.1 & 871318.1.2), English, probably after a design by Robert Adam (1728 - 1792) and attributed to Thomas Chippendale (1718 - 1779), and almost certainly made by him for the Saloon at Saltram in 1771/2.
Full description
The suite is generally attributed to Thomas Chippendale, owing to similarities with two documented suites at Harewood House, Yorkshire. Five payments to Chippendale are recorded in Lord Boringdon’s cash account book between 1771 and 1772, but the furniture supplied is not itemised. It has been argued that the total sum of £225 ‘may not reflect the true scale of the commission’ (Christopher Gilbert, The Life and Work of Thomas Chippendale, London 1972, vol. I, p. 257). It may have been on his succession in 1768 that John Parker (later 1st Baron Boringdon) approached the famous neo-classical architect Robert Adam to design the interior of a ‘great room’ (or Saloon) at Saltram. Two of Adam’s unexecuted drawings for the Saloon survive at Saltram (NT 871171 & 871172) and a further set is at the Sir John Soane’s Museum in London. Adam provided alternative designs for the ceiling, one of which is almost identical to the ceiling as carried out. The original blue damask for the walls was purchased in 1770 for £300. By 1811 it had faded (or been replaced) as according to the Rev. Thomas Talbot, the hanging was a ‘riche dove’ colour. Later in the nineteenth century striped silk was put up and this was replaced again in 1950. To achieve an effect of total unity in the Saloon, Adam designed all fixtures and fittings – even the fine gilded door handles are based on a design illustrated in the second volume of Adam’s ‘Works in Architecture’. The chairs, tables and torchères would have been arranged around the walls giving prominence to the Axminster carpet (NT 872446), which Adam designed to echo the pattern of the ceiling, but using stronger colours to complement the pictures. (Wolf Burchard, 2016)
Provenance
Possibly supplied c,1771 by Thomas Chippendale (1718 - 1779) to John Parker (d. 1788), made 1st Baron Boringdon in 1784. Accepted in part payment of death duties by HM Treasury from the executors of Edmund Robert Parker, 4th Earl of Morley (1877 - 1951) and transferred on loan to NT in 1957, and gifted outright in 1984.
Makers and roles
attributed to Thomas Chippendale (Otley 1718 - London 1779) , cabinetmaker probably Robert Adam (Kirkcaldy 1728 - London 1792), designer
References
Gilbert, 1978: Christopher Gilbert. The life and work of Thomas Chippendale. London: Studio Vista: Christie’s, 1978., I, p. 257