An extremely rare scarlet-japanned stool or bench in the Queen Anne / early Georgian style, after Giles Grendey’s Lazcano suite. England, circa 1900-1920.

Why we like it

This bench, exotically decorated in Chinese red and displaying flower-festooned vignettes of gardens inhabited by Oriental figures, enriched with silvering, and raised in bas-relief, evokes one of the most celebrated suites of London furniture of the early 18th century, made in the Clerkenwell workshops of Giles Grendey for the Duke of Infantado of Lazcano castle, Spain, in circa 1735–1740.

Design 

The Infantado suite was fashionably ‘japanned’ in trompe l'oeil red and gold to resemble the prestigious lacquer imports of the East India trading companies, in the style discussed in the influential 17th century manual issued by George Parker and John Stalker and entitled, A Treatise of Japanning and Varnishing, being a complete discovery of those Arts..., 1688.

Interest in such scenes had been aroused by illustrated accounts of embassies to China, but they also evoked the magnificent French Histoire du Roi de la Chine tapestries designed around 1700 at the Beauvais manufactory (Gerard C.C. Tsang, From Beijing to Versailles: Artistic Relations between China and France, Hong Kong, 1997). The tapestries in turn stimulated European taste for Chinese figurative wallpapers commissioned through the Parisian marchand-merciers, and also lead to publications such as Jean-Antoine Fraisse's Livre de Desseins Chinois, 1735.

Dimensions

Height: 18.5 in / 47 cm
Width: 26 in / 66 cm
Depth: 18 in / 46 cm

Condition

Ready for placement and immediate use. Good original antique condition, newly upholstered and covered in Italian linen combined with an Uzbeki Ikat.