Mid 18th Century French Carved Walnut Side Chair, Régence Taste, Original Needlepoint Seat

Details

Description

• Material: Carved walnut, hand-woven jute webbing, original petit-point needlepoint seat
• Color/Finish: Deep warm walnut patina; needlepoint in greens, … Read more • Material: Carved walnut, hand-woven jute webbing, original petit-point needlepoint seat
• Color/Finish: Deep warm walnut patina; needlepoint in greens, reds, golds and blues
• Condition: Frame sound and tight. The needlepoint is worn with thinning, small losses and faded colour. Sold as found, with its original seat
• Era/Period: 18th century taste - Régence / early Louis XV. See the note below

A carved walnut side chair with three scalloped ladder slats under a crest rail centred on a carved flower, turned finials to the uprights, acanthus-carved cabriole knees, scrolled volute feet, and a serpentine X-stretcher with a turned centre finial. The front apron is scalloped and carved with a central shell.

The seat is the reason to want it: a pictorial petit-point panel worked with a basket, flowers and foliage, soft with age and never replaced. It is worn, and we would leave it that way - original needlepoint on a chair of this age is worth more tired than a crisp new fabric would be.

ON THE DATE
The vocabulary here is Régence: an X-stretcher with a carved centre finial, a shell-carved apron and scrolled feet are features that high French work had abandoned by the full Louis XV period but that provincial workshops kept through the middle of the 18th century. Turning it over supports real age - wide hand-woven jute webbing, hand-scalloped seat rails, no machine-cut surfaces visible.

We have not had it authenticated and we are not claiming a documented date. An excellent 19th-century chair in the Régence taste can look very like an 18th-century one, and the honest position is that the construction points early and the paperwork does not exist. Priced accordingly - well under what a documented period example brings, and well over a decorative copy.

From a private collection. Sold as found. Pickup or local delivery only. See less