A pair of rare Regency mahogany hall chairs from the Bateson family of Belvoir Park, attributed to Seddon and Sons

A pair of rare Regency mahogany hall chairs from the Bateson family of Belvoir Park, attributed to Seddon and Sons, each with an upright lyre shaped back with broad strapwork edging centred on a palmette and forming a double-scroll cresting rail, inset with a recessed oval panel painted with a bat’s wing crest on a black ground, the rectangular seat set above tapering, fluted square section front legs with spade feet, outswept back legs.  English, circa 1818.

Provenance:  Commissioned by the Bateson family of Moira Park and Belvoir Park, County Down, Northern Ireland.

Possibly taken to Heslington Hall in Yorkshire or 12 Grosvenor Place London when the family vacated Belvoir.  (The chairs do not appear in the 1918 and 1923 sales at Belvoir nor in the sales of property relating to two families who lived in the house after the Batesons).

Footnote: These chairs are interesting for several reasons.  Their design relates at least partially to the work of Charles Heathcote Tatham.  The front legs of the chairs are based on Roman stools illustrated in his ‘Etchings’, representing the best examples of ancient ornamental architecture : drawn from the originals in Rome, and other parts of Italy, during the years 1794, 1795 and 1796, plate 77.  Tatham’s work was highly influential, Thomas Hope’s designs in particular owing a pronounced debt to his work, and were adapted by many of the great decorative designers of this period for use as ornament on their productions.  The clockmaker and bronzier Vulliamy famously made use of his lion design for candlesticks for example and several copies of the stool in the aforementioned plate, illustrated below, are known.

These chairs are not simply copies of Tatham’s work however and are the result of particularly skilled designers combining an iconic leg design with an altogether more contemporary chair back. That this has been done so skilfully in the present chairs is no surprise given that we can say with near certainty that they were produced by the highly important firm of T & G Seddon.  This attribution rests on a pair of chairs of identical design, one of which, illustrated in Christopher Gilbert’s ‘Pictorial Dictionary of Marked London Furniture, 1700-1840’, London, 1996,

fig.822, bears a Seddon label and the address used dates it to circa 1820.

We can be even more specific in our dating for the present pair of chairs due to the very unusual crests painted in the centre of the backs.  These crests feature a bat’s wing, an uncommon heraldic device, that seems to have been used by just one family, the Batesons.  The bat’s wing is clearly a verbal play on Bateson.

The Batesons had origins in Lancashire but sold their estates in England and moved to Ireland in the 18th century.  Initially their primary seat was Moira Park in County Down but in 1818 Thomas Bateson was promoted to the rank of Baronet and he purchased the magnificent Belvoir Park, also in County Down.  He did not unduly change the architecture of the house but added stable blocks in the grounds which feature the Bateson arms in all their glory, including the wonderful bat’s wing crests.  It is highly likely that having received the honour of a baronetcy, the family celebrated by commissioning these furniture from Seddons at this point.

Both of the chairs carry the journeyman’s stamp TB on the underside of the rails.  Another pair of chairs of this model, though missing their painted crests and with restorations, were sold at Christie’s on the 4th of January 2004, lot 55. One of these chairs also carried the TB stamp.

Of additional interest is the fact that the Duke of Wellington’s mother, Anne Hill, was born at Belvoir Park and the Duke visited several times.