South African Design, Past & Present
Timed Online Auction, 7 - 26 June 2024
Furniture and Metalware
About this Item
Harlequin set of six Cape Neo-Classical stinkwood side chairs, late 18th century
each with curved top-rail with gable cresting above a pierced fiddle-back splat, riempie seat, on square-section tapering legs joined by an H-stretcher, one example with fluted square-section legs
Notes
The fiddle-back style chair with it's fine proportions and classical elegance was fashionable at the Cape towards the end of the eighteenth century. The archeological discovery of the ruins of Pompeii was the spark that ignited the taste for Neo-Classicism and represented a resistance to the exuberance of the Rococo. This chair replaced the angular transitional Tulbagh chair in the Cape.
Provenance
Four of these chairs were sold on the 'Important Cape furniture from the collection of Dr Gavin Watkins' auction, Stephan Welz & Co. in association with Sotheby's, Cape Town, 29 January 1998, lot 354
Literature
cf. Michael Baraitser and Anton Oberholzer (2004) Cape Antique furniture, Cape Town: Struik. A similar example is illustrated on page 209.
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