A pair of George III satinwood and painted bedsteps, attributed to Seddon, Sons & Shackleton

A pair of George III satinwood and painted bedsteps, attributed to Seddon, Sons & Shackleton, the top steps hinged for storage, the West Indian satinwood frames and turned supports forming a golden ground for the painted floral decoration, paterae and highlighted borders, each tier with new gilt tooled green leather.

George Seddon was a highly successful cabinet-maker in London's Aldersgate Street. In the 1790's he was joined by his sons, George and Thomas and his son-in-law, Thomas Shackleton. The observer, Sophie von la Roche, a German novelist and traveller, described her visit to the workshops in 1786 as seeing four hundred journeymen 'housed in a building with six wings'. She spoke of seeing 'a thousand articles of straw-coloured satinwood' inside, which was often decorated with painted floral garlands and borders of Moss Rose and Morning Glory, taken from botanical resources such as Curtis's Botanical Magazine of 1787 and 1788.