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Lot Essay
The fluted baluster legs of the window seats are designed the 'antique' or 'Roman' fashion, in the manner of seat-furniture supplied c. 1775-80 by the Berkeley Square cabinet-making firm of John Linnell. A suite of seat-furniture supplied by Linnell to John, 5th Duke of Argyll for Inveraray Castle in 1782 features a similar baluster leg (H. Hayward & P. Kirkham, William and John Linnell, London, 1980, vol. II, p. 46, figs. 89-91).
If the window seats were originally supplied to the Jolliffe family, it may be that they were delivered by the maker to his client prior to Thomas Samuel Jolliffe's furnishing of Ammerdown House, Frome, Somerset. Jolliffe employed the architect James Wyatt in the building of Ammerdown from January 1788, but it was not until 1795 that an invoice from John Linnell betrays his intention to begin furnishing. That furniture from a slightly earlier era survives at Ammerdown would suggest that furniture from an earlier house, probably Petersfield House, Hampshire, was brought to Ammerdown to supplement the new furnishings there, or that the collections were added to in the 19th and 20th centuries.
If the window seats were originally supplied to the Jolliffe family, it may be that they were delivered by the maker to his client prior to Thomas Samuel Jolliffe's furnishing of Ammerdown House, Frome, Somerset. Jolliffe employed the architect James Wyatt in the building of Ammerdown from January 1788, but it was not until 1795 that an invoice from John Linnell betrays his intention to begin furnishing. That furniture from a slightly earlier era survives at Ammerdown would suggest that furniture from an earlier house, probably Petersfield House, Hampshire, was brought to Ammerdown to supplement the new furnishings there, or that the collections were added to in the 19th and 20th centuries.