Sofa, carved and gilded walnut, green velvet cover trimmed with braid and cord, Britain, ca. 1732

Sofa, the top rectangular with rounded top corners, arms curving out to end in scrolls, cabriole legs terminating in paw feet, the top of the legs carved with lion masks; the deep seat rails curved in profile and carved in the centre front with a satyr mask and in the centre of the sides with shells, all flanked by scrolling foliage. Covered in green velvet trimmed with green braid and cord.

Accepted by HM Government in lieu of tax, and allocated to the Victoria and Albert Museum

Thomas Roberts junior delivered a bill for furniture to Sir Robert Walpole, c. 1729, which primarily relates to Walpole's London houses (though it includes some deliveries to Houghton, including the caffoy for the hangings and chair covers that survive in the Saloon). In the absence of any documentary links to other chair-makers, he is the most likely candidate for the maker of both this suite and the walnut and part-gilt suite, which were probably made around the same time and in the same workshop, as they both incorporate an identical striped twill base cloth (collated between W.2-2002 and W.27-2002). The present suite was seemingly nearing completion in 1731, while the burr-walnut suite, stylistically earlier, could well have been made in the late 1720s -- perhaps in a deliberately old-fashioned style to to suit the pre-existing embroidered bed.

This sofa is one of a pair, belonging to the large suite commissioned by Sir Robert Walpole, England’s first prime minister, for the State Apartment at Houghton Hall, Norfolk. The house was built between 1722 and 1735, and the State Apartment – comprising a bedroom, dressing room and drawing room – was furnished by about 1732. The centrepiece of this suite, all of which was covered in the same rich green silk velvet, is the great State Bed designed by William Kent (Museum no. W.58-2002). Although Kent was responsible for the design of the bed, the accompanying seat furniture seems to have been entirely the work of the chair-maker Thomas Roberts Junior, who supplied other furniture to Walpole around this time. These pieces are carved naturalistically with lions’ masks and legs, and gilded on a ground made gritty with sand.

W.55-2002