A Fine Suite of 12 Mahogany Dining Chairs by Gillows, Related to the Hackwood Park Commission, c.1825

A Fine Suite of 12 Mahogany Dining Chairs by Gillows, Related to the Hackwood Park Commission, c.1825. The suite of waisted design with beautifully pierced scrollwork to the top rails and moulded detail to the uprights which is echoed in the seat rails. The legs are of typical Gillows bulbous reeded form and terminate in their original brass castors. The chairs are upholstered in close nailed blue antiqued leather. It is rare to find a set of 12 dining chairs of this quality on the market. Of serpentine shape, these fine chairs anticipate the later balloon back models that dominated the Victorian period. These chairs are in one of the most famous Gillows patterns of the 19th century, inspired by a design first created for the Barons Bolton in 1813. The Hackwood suite, discussed by Dr Susan Stuart in her monograph on Gillows, pp.218-220, was, as noted by the author, remarkably modern for its time. It was produced by the Oxford Street, London, branch of Gillows and the designs made in London were usually much more fashionable and up to date than those produced in Lancaster. Nonetheless, this suite is still strikingly avant garde for the period. Dr Stuart notes that Gillows continued to produce variations on the Hackwood design until around 1840 and it is likely that our chairs date to c.1825. The Hackwood Park suite was sold by Christie’s on the 20th-22nd of April 1998, lot 158 as a set of 24. A set of 12 chairs of virtually identical pattern to our set but in mahogany rather than rosewood sold at Sotheby’s in November of 2008.