Six side chairs signed "Laud"
This set of six side chairs are a rare example of furniture that carries both the name of their maker and date of manufacture, Laud 1764. Their aesthetic was characterized by a subtle and refined treatment of the fashionable chinoiserie style of the mid-eighteenth century. The backs of the chairs are surmounted by the form of a curving pagoda. Below, the chairs are filled with lattice-work, or Chinese pailing that is strongly characteristic of English chairs designed in the chinoiserie style. In other examples, the chair railings sometimes take fabulously intricate form, but here the pattern is restrained and geometric. The most famous and influential publication to contain examples of such chairs is Thomas Chippendale’s The Gentleman & Cabinetmaker’s Director of 1754.
Laud was working in a style that represented the height of fashionable taste, however, from all the publications he had at his disposal, he drew an original design that handled with dexterity the exotic forms of the taste for the Oriental and combined them with an English restraint drawn recognizably from an earlier tradition of furniture design.
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