Fine Pair of Gillows Shell Back Hall Chairs by Anderton

A superb pair of shell-back hall chairs, by Gillows of London and Lancaster with excellent carving and great color and patina. The chair backs, richly carved with Venus-shell and C-scrolls predate the robust antique style promoted by George Smith in The Cabinet Maker and Upholsterer’s Guide of 1826. The first recorded example of this style of hall chairs was a commission for the Revd. Holland Edwards of Pennant, Conway, North Wales. Each chair has a pencil inscription to the base of the seat “Anderton.” Anderton of Lancaster is listed as a carver in 1816, he is named in the Gillows records as having carved trusses on a bookcase  (Gillows Estimate Sketch Books, 344/100, p.2006). For Anderton, see Beard and Gilbert, Dictionary of English Furniture Makers, 1666-1844, p.13.

Gillows of Lancaster and London, founded c.1730 became one of the pre-eminent English cabinet making firms of the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, on a par with Chippendale, Mayhew and Ince and Holland and Sons. Supplying nobility and gentry, particularly from northern Catholic families, the firm remained in family hands until it was acquired by a management partnership between 1815 and 1820. The firm maintained its standards through the late nineteenth century when it was acquired by the competing firm of Warings. The firm of Waring and Gillows finally closed its doors in the 1950s.

For a similar chair see Gillows of Lancaster and London. 2008 by Susan Stuart vol 1, p. 203, plate 177.

English c. 1815

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