A SETTEE AND TWO CHAIRS FROM FOREMARKE HALL
This sofa and its matching armchairs are part of a suite made for Sir Robert Burdett (1716-1797), 4th Baron Bramcote, of Foremarke Hall in Derbyshire, in 1766. This little known Chippendale commission has gained importance as the furniture, dispersed in 1939, has gradually come to light. London dealer and Chippendale Society corporate member Godson & Coles acquired the sofa two years ago while the chairs emerged at Sotheby’s, New York, early in 2019. They are part of a suite which originally comprised at least ten elbow chairs, two window seats and a sofa. The suite was probably delivered before February 1766 when Sir Robert’s account books recorded the following payment:
17 February 1766 – To Mr. Chippendale cabbenet Maker for Chairs
for the Country £37 – 4 – 0
Sir Robert was the scion of a long-established Warwickshire and Derbyshire family and MP for Tamworth, Staffordshire, between 1748 and 1768. Foremarke Hall is an early 18th century house which was comprehensively remodelled between 1759 and 1762 to the designs of David Hiorns (c.1712-1776). Among the London contractors engaged to refurnish the house were John Cobb, Samuel Smith and Thomas Chippendale snr. Sir Robert Burdett’s accounts record payments to Chippendale between February 1766 and April 1774 of over £500. In addition, Sir Robert noted on 1 July 1769 that ‘£400 still remains due to him to clear his bill’, suggesting that the total expenditure was closer to £1000. The suite was recorded in situ in the Large Drawing Room at Foremark in 1892, when it was described as ‘The Green and White Painted Cabriole Suite’. In fact the suite was originally blue and white, as paint analysis has revealed, but over time the yellowing of the paint caused it to appear green by the 1890s.
Other pieces identified as part of Chippendale’s Foremarke Hall commission are two neo-Classical overmantel mirrors, probably supplied in 1769 (one illus. Macquoid (1908), fig. 34 and Macquoid & Edwards (1954), fig. 100, the other illus. Dreweatts, 21 May 1986, lot 59); the ‘Globe Lamps’ for the staircase which were billed in March 1772 (illus. Hussey (1923), fig. 10); and a fine mahogany secretaire bookcase (illus. Coleridge (1997), figs 2-5).
Foremarke Hall was sold by the Burdett family in 1939 and became successively a military hospital, an officer training academy and finally, in 1947, a school, which it still is. Its contents were sold at auction but most of the best furniture had already been removed and dispersed between several Burdett houses, most notably Ramsbury Manor in Wiltshire. Some Chippendale furniture remains in the family’s possession, including chairs from the blue and white suite and the mahogany secretaire bookcase, but other pieces were sold at auction by Dreweatts in 1986. These included an overmantel mirror (lot 59), two window seats (lot 57) and six chairs (lot 56). The present chairs were probably part of lot 56 and have spent the intervening years in a private collection in Charleston, South Carolina. Meanwhile the settee had probably left the family at an earlier, unknown date, and is here reunited with the chairs probably for the first time since 1939.