An Important Suite of Eight George II Mahogany Armchairs, retaining their original needlework upholstery.

Possibly by Thomas Chippendale, or aworkshop strongly associated with him. 

This distinguished suite of eight mahogany armchairs represents the highest echelon of mid-18th century English cabinetmaking. Each chair retains its original hand-stitched needlework seat cover — a survival of extraordinary rarity. Worked in wool on canvas, each seat is individually designed, reflecting the bespoke nature of high-status upholstery commissions in the 1750s. The covers exhibit a dazzling array of Rococo imagery: stylised foliage, flowering urns, fantastical birds, and baroque scrollwork — executed in a vivid palette of reds, greens, golds, and blues. Their survival attests not only to the quality of materials used but to the care and reverence with which these chairs have been treated over more than two centuries.

The form and detailing of the chairs align closely with the designs published by Thomas Chippendale in The Gentleman and Cabinet-Maker’s Director (1754, with expanded editions in 1755 and 1762) — the most influential pattern book of English furniture design in the 18th century. Chippendale’s Director was revolutionary: it codified the emerging ‘modern’ styles — Rococo, Gothic, and Chinese — and offered a vocabulary of forms that would shape English taste for decades.

The present chairs are deeply indebted to this idiom. The sinuous serpentine crests, with their crisply carved C-scrolls and foliate clasps, exemplify Chippendale’s Rococo taste, while the pierced splats are of particular interest: their design blends organic Rococo scrolls with pointed Gothic tracery, drawing directly on the Gothic Chair Backs illustrated in Plates XIII–XV of the Director. The carved “nibs” of the C-scrolls, which curl outward like stylised crockets, heighten the Gothic allusion — a fusion of ornament and architecture typical of Chippendale’s most original designs.

The chairs’ structural form — with generous square seats, shaped arms, and pronounced cabriole legs terminating in tightly scrolled toes — also mirrors the robust and sculptural aesthetic favoured by Chippendale and his circle. While no bill or label survives to confirm authorship, the sophistication of the design and the quality of the carving suggest they were made in a leading London workshop fully conversant with Chippendale’s designs and likely employing craftsmen from his extended network. The possibility remains open that they may have originated in Chippendale’s own workshop in St. Martin’s Lane, where by the mid-1750s he had assembled a team of the finest carvers, joiners, and upholsterers in the capital.

The suite was likely commissioned by Robert Berkeley (1713–1804) shortly after inheriting Spetchley Park in Worcestershire in 1756. Berkeley, a cultivated and politically active Catholic gentleman, undertook substantial improvements to the house, including remodelling the Dining Room in the newly fashionable Adam style. These chairs were almost certainly commissioned as part of this campaign. That Berkeley owned a copy of Chippendale’s 1754 Director is telling: it places him firmly within the circle of English patrons eager to embrace the latest French-influenced design. Whether these chairs were made directly by Chippendale or by a rival workshop working in his style, they reflect the aspirations of a man eager to express fashionable taste through his interiors.

The suite remained at Spetchley until the mid-20th century, where they were recorded in the 1893 house inventory and again in 1949, at which time they were valued at £2,000 — the highest single valuation given to any object in the house. Their historical provenance, design pedigree, and the survival of their original seat coverings place this suite among the most significant examples of English Rococo seat furniture known today.