Hall chair
by CHIPPENDALE, Thomas, Willow, japanned white and green, 98 x 53 x 51 cm
This is one of a set of four chairs made for the hall at the villa in Hampton, Middlesex, that belonged to the celebrated actor-manager David Garrick (1717–1779). Hall chairs were typically made of solid wood, and painted in whole or in part – usually showing the owner’s coat of arms on the back. But Garrick, who did not have a coat of arms, has instead used ribbons and beads surrounded by a triumphal laurel wreath, doubtless alluding to his own ‘triumph’ in the theatre.
The chairs were almost certainly made by Thomas Chippendale, whom Garrick commissioned to furnish his Hampton villa in the 1760s and 1770s, and whose reputation, like Garrick’s, has long outlived him.