The Age Of Rococo - England - Part 5

After the plain elegance of Queen Anne, chairs were among the first types of furniture to become vehicles for the new ornamental styles. Hoof feet were popular at an early stage. Between 1720 and 1735, there was widespread carving of the lion mask on chair legs and arms, with manes frequently covering the arm supports. Fish scales were another motif used to decorate legs which might end in dolphin heads.
In the homes of the rich, whose rooms were designed by fashionable architects, chairs formed a wild menagerie  of fur and feather.

Just as important as the lion motif was the eagle whose head terminated arms and legs and surmounted back rails and whose feathers sometimes swathed the whole of the carvable surfaces which were then finished in parcel (partial) gilt. These animal forms found a perfect framework in the sinuous lines of the cabriole leg which stayed at the forefront of handmade furniture fashion throughout the entire period.

Human masks, more often than not female, were employed extensively of the knees of chairs; Kent also made effective use of American Indian heads, which provided fertile opportunity for the lavish addition of feather headdresses.
An important feature of the chair - was the apron provided by the seats front rail. Shellwork and scrolling were to be found in profusion on these aprons. A popular form of carving was the acanthus whose leaf has strongly serrated edges; it was a design found on Corinthian capitals and therefore much in harmony with the classical flavour of the new Palladianism. Elaborately carved aprons were a feature of the work of Giles Grendey (1693 - 1780), a London master joiner who produced many pieces for export.

While non fitted furniture, such as chairs, were undergoing the decorative transition, they were becoming wider - some, indeed, assuming extraordinary wide proportions - to accommodate the large hooped skirts of the time. Similarly, the arm supports were being raked, the upper end being considerably further back than the lower, for the same reasons.
Gilt chairs proliferated and none were more splendid than those designed by Kent as parts of a unified scheme of interiors decoration. Typical were a set of twelve mahogany armchairs carved in gilt around 1730 for a room at Houghton Hall, Norfolk. The seat rails are centred by by a double carved shell, a favourite motif of Kent's. The seats are covered in a Spitalfields velvet which matches the covering of the walls. Such unity of design might seem unremarkable now, but it was an early English example of such thought.