A George I burr walnut and walnut double-chair-back settee, the top rail carved with shells and acanthus leaves above vase-shaped splats, roundels and scrolled arms, the bow-fronted drop-in seat covered in eighteenth-century floral needlework, raised on cabriole legs carved with shells and terminating in claw and ball feet

A closely related two-seat settee attributed to Giles Grendey, featuring the same acanthus ornament, claw and ball feet, top rail shell carving and splat shape, is in the Lady Lever Art Gallery. The top rail border of the carving of the present settee differs slightly but is in fact replicated on a different chair in the same suite. The consistency across these different features raises the possibility that the present lot belonged to the same suite, and Lucy Wood states that the Lady Lever group ‘is evidently part of a larger suite’.

Another settee to this design was in the renowned Percival Griffiths Collection, illustrated in Jussel’s study of the collection and Macquoid’s Dictionary of English Furniture.