ATTRIBUTED TO GILLOWS, CIRCA 1780

This chair, with its particularly refined leg and pleasing light wood inlays, corresponds to a 'Drapery and Feather' back chair in Gillows' 1787 Estimate Sketch Book. Also known as the Prince’s pattern, with its feathered plumes, the firm supplied Nathaniel Crompton Esq. of Manchester with '10 elegant mahogany arm'd chairs (feather pattern) ye backs, fronts & elbows neatly enriched & molded & finished in the best manner'. As Susan Stuart comments, 'This feather pattern was undoubtedly one of the finest, most expensive and striking patterns the Lancaster firm ever manufactured' (Susan E. Stuart, Gillows of Lancaster and London 1730-1840, vol. II, Woodbridge, 2008, pp. 160-161, pl. 112-115).