The Home Beautiful: The James Wyatt Armchair, 1805

Oak Armchair
C. 1805
The Victoria & Albert Museum

There’s something wholly English about this open armchair of oak, with cluster-column legs. Crafted in the Gothic Revival style, it is decorated with a turned ring at half height, and square armrests which enclose gothic tracery carving . The back is pierced and divided by cluster-columns into three arcades with tracery carving, The top rail forms a pediment which surrounds further tracery motifs.

The chair is said to be the work of the architect James Wyatt (1746-1813) who may have made it for one of the interiors that the Prince Regent, later George IV, commissioned for Carlton House in London. Records show that the Gothic Library at Carlton House, was supplied with a set of oak seat furniture in 1808. This chair may belong to that set.

Curiously, the chair bears the inventory mark of Windsor Castle. The mark was added about 1835, indicating that this chair eventually ended up at Windsor around the time of William IV. Eight matching side chairs are still in the Royal Collection at Windsor Castle. Why or how this one escaped is something of a mystery.

Her Majesty's Furniture: The Strawberry Hill Chair, 1755

Ebonized Gothic Revival Chair, 1755
The Victoria & Albert Museum

This handsome chair was designed for the historian Horace Walpole, Fourth Earl of Oxford (and son of the first British Prime Minister), by his friend, the designer Richard Bentley who had been commissioned to design a chair with a back akin to the outline of a Gothic window.  Walpole asked that the chair be very lightweight, painted black, with a rush seat.  Bentley certainly delivered with this exquisite piece which he had constructed by the fashionable London cabinet-maker William Hallett.

Walpole was known for his collection of  furniture, however, he also frequently commissioned new furniture for his own use.  Later, he opened his lovely home to visitors and became one of the best-known exponents of the Gothic Revival style.

He was thrilled with this chair, and commissioned seven more to furnish the Great Parlor at his country residence, Strawberry Hill, in Twickenham which Walpole had modified in the Gothic Revival style.  As Walpole wished, the chair, like its cousins, is painted black to imitate ebony and boasts a back in the form of a gothic window with a drop-in seat with a black horsehair top cover.   The upholstery we see here was added in the Nineteenth Century.

Another from the set which shows the original caned seats which they all once had.

Object of the Day, Museum Edition: A French Mahogany Arm Chair, 1870

Armchair
French, 1870
This and all related images from:
The Victoria & Albert Museum

Here, we see an armchair of mahogany with gilt-bronze mounts. The arm supports are designed as winged sphinxes. This chair is the work of the French furniture makers at Jacob Fréres and is stamped as such. It is stenciled underneath with the inventory marks of the Palais de Tuileries and the number 27463. The number refers to its removal to the Garde-Meuble in 1826 from the Chateau de St. Cloud.

What’s curious is that though the inventory marks are genuine, the chair itself is a fake. It is not the chair that was removed from the Chateau de St. Cloud. It is, in fact, a newer chair from 1870 which was built on the frame of a much simpler chair. The original chair was the one which was supplied by Jacob Fréres between 1802 and 1803. Let’s look at the front legs. Aren’t they a bit out of proportion? The legs are, in reality, additions which were stripped from a table which had been built by Jacob Fréres.

In effect, we have a chair built in 1870 which someone has tried to give importance to by using the inventory numbers of an earlier chair built for Napoleon I. So, this is a con job along the lines of something Matt Bomer’s Neal Caffrey would have executed had White Collar been set in Nineteenth Century France. The forgery is quite clever and whoever did it took a great deal of time and effort to make it look convincing. Why? At this point, no one knows. It remains an attractive, if not poorly proportioned, mystery. 

The Home Beautiful: A Seddon & Sons Chair, 1790

Chair
Seddon & Sons of London, 1790
Seen here without its cushion.
This and all related images from:
The Victoria & Albert Museum

Once part of a large set of drawing room furniture, this delicate satinwood chair with its hand-painted polychrome flowers and feathers must now represent its lost brethren. Made in 1790 by the English firm of Seddon & Sons, the chair was owned by the wealthy Tupper Family of Hauteville House in Guernsey, England, who had furnished their opulent drawing room in the light, painted and marquetried style which was popular at the time.

Seddon & Sons was, at the end of the Eighteenth Century, undoubtedly the largest furniture concern in London. The shield-shape of the chair’s back was, likely, inspired by the designs of George Hepplewhite which had been published in his book The Cabinet-maker and Upholsterer's Guide of 1788.

The original bill of sale accompanies the chair and notes that it was one of eighteen which had been ordered by Daniel Tupper for Hauteville House. Three of the set were armchairs.

The bill reads:
George Seddon & Sons,
J. Shackleton

18 Satinwood Elbow Chairs round fronts and hollow can'd seats neatly Japanned - ornamented with roses in back and peacock feather border @ 73/6 ea. £66.3.0.

Her Majesty's Furniture: The Wakefield Tapestry Chair, C. 1750

Part of an impressive suite which consisted of at least five armchairs and a sofa, this tapestry armchair was designed to show off the taste and wealth of the owner, and would probably have been displayed prominently in a drawing room or ornate reception room.

The suite was sold by Richard Wright and Edward Elwick of Wakefield, Yorkshire, who were working between 1745 and 1771--the pre-eminent firm of cabinet-makers and upholsterers in Yorkshire at that time. The chair's gilt frame is adorned with carved fish scales and acanthus leaves.

It was made for William Wentworth, 4th Earl of Strafford (1722-1791), for Wentworth Castle, Yorkshire. The Duchess of Northumberland wrote that she saw "French chairs emb'd [embroidered] with flowers upon Brown by the famous Mr Wright" upon a visit to Wentworth Castle in 1760.

The Home Beautiful: The Elephant Hall Chair, c. 1725

Hall Chair
c. 1725
Altered after 1762
This and all related images from
The Victoria & Albert Museum

A hall chair such as this one was made to give a waiting servant a place to sit without being too comfortable. They generally were arranged in the front hallway of a large townhouse or country estate. A footman would often spend hours waiting in the hall for his master to return home or even just to have a door opened. Still, even though such chairs were meant to be utilitarian and rigid, they were also expected to be stylish and handsome. Often, these chairs would display the arms of the owner of the home. 


This example, from about 1725, reflects the initial interest in chinoiserie. The lacquered backboard and seat-board were commissioned by a British furniture maker from a Chinese maker. The pattern for the coat of arms was surely sent out with the order. The individual pieces were shipped back to England where they were set into the carcass of the chair which had already been japanned in imitation of the Asian lacquer.

This chair reflects the complex patterns of trade and stylistic influence between Europe and East Asia in the 18th century. The lacquered back-board and seat-board were commissioned in Britain from China, and a pattern for the lacquered coat of arms must have been sent out with the order. The two boards could be packed flat to take up minimal space in the ship on its return voyage. On arrival they were assembled with the seat rails and legs, which were made in Britain and 'japanned' here in imitation of lacquer. Hall chairs of this type were fashionable in Britain in the 1720s-30s, and a number of similar examples survive. 

The original owner of this chair is unknown, as the original coat of arms has been altered. The existing armorial shield and elephant crest is painted in oils over the original lacquered arms. The existing crest is for Sir Herbert Pakington, Baronet, and his wife Elizabeth Hawkins. According to the V&A, “These arms must have been painted after Sir Herbert succeeded to the title in 1762 – a generation after the chairs were made.”

Her Majesty's Furniture: A Chippendale Armchair, 1740-60

Drawing Room Chair of Mahogany
Thomas Chippendale
1740-60
This and all related images from:
The Victoria & Albert Museum

Myriad variations of this upholstered drawing-room armchair could have been found in almost any wealthy, mid-18th century household.  This particular mahogany chair is exceptional because it came from the workshop of Thomas Chippendale (1718-1779).  The carver has used stylized dolphin heads as terminals for the chair's feet and the arms.

Chippendale's original design incorporated the whole body of the dolphin - its tail visible at the top of the leg, but the carver has adapted the design, possibly because this chair was likely part of a set which was a special commission.  The scale of the chair and quality of the carving are further  indicators that this chair was part of a commission for a set of seating furniture for a large drawing room. According to the V&A, "At least four other chairs and a footstool of the same carved design are known today."

Thomas Chippendale recommended that tapestry or needlework should be used for drawing-room chairs almost exclusively over other materials. The embroidery on this chair probably dates from the 1740s and may have been cut down from a set of larger wall hangings.

This chair is numbered "IV" of a set of six.  Another from the set lives at the Lady Lever Art Gallery in Liverpool and four others were shown by Messrs. Partridge in their summer exhibition in 1939. 

Her Majesty's Furniture: The Richard Bridgens Chair, 1815

Chair, 1815
The Victoria & Albert Museum

Who doesn’t like a chair with a little fringe on it? While, the upholstery on this chair has been replaced, it has been done so using historical illustrations of the chair and by copying wool fragments of the original cover. Hidden under the upholstery, the chair is stamped with the numerals XXIV, suggesting that it was once a part of a large set which was housed at Battle Abbey.


Battle Abbey was founded by William the Conqueror on the site of the Battle of Hastings in 1066. The abbey was rebuilt by 1500. Between 1812 and 1822, Sir Godfrey Vassal Webster (1789-1836) , who inherited the abbey in 1810, ordered a massive program of restoration which included the reroofing of the medieval Great Hall and work on the former Abbot's house. Webster commissioned appropriate furniture, including this set of chairs which were used throughout the abbey.

The frame of the chair is of stained oak, partly gilded and painted crimson, with an upholstered back and seat and gilt brass adornment. The chair-back boasts rectangular upholstered panel which is flanked by two spirals and set between two cross rails, each of which is ornamented with five gilt-brass rosette studs. In the center of the crest is a large gilt-brass shield bearing the Webster family crest. The chair is upholstered in crimson cloth with a deep, dramatic fringe around the seat.

Her Majesty’s Furniture: The Prince Albert Chair, 1851

The Prince Albert Chair
English, 1851
The Victoria & Albert Museum

Prince Albert’s role in the Great Exhibition of 1851 cannot be discounted. This chair commemorates the Prince Consort’s leadership. This large armchair of carved and inlaid walnut with its painted porcelain plaque and arms and seat covered in fringed pink cotton velvet was designed as a companion to a light, feminine chair representing the Queen.

The porcelain plaque depicts the Prince Consort and serves as a reminder of his tireless work in the planning the Great Exhibition. Further homage to the Prince comes from carved emblems such as the lion, rose, shamrock and thistle on the back of the chair.

This is the work of Henry Eyles who displayed the chair with other examples of his work in Class XXVI (Furniture). Eyles was an upholsterer in Bath with premises at 31 Broad Street whose work was received favorable by the Queen and her consort.

Her Majesty's Furniture: The Coburg Armchair, 1851

Armchair
Theodor Behrens
Coburg, Germany, 1851
The Victoria & Albert Museum
Donated from Holyrood Palace

Here we see one of a set of four ornate Gothic-style armchairs which match an impressive sideboard.  The set was made in the German state of Coburg (the home of Queen Victoria’s husband, Prince Albert) and was sent specifically to Prince Albert’s 1851 Great Exhibition to represent Germany’s creative work. The chairs were not intended to be thrones (though that’s the overall look), but rather were meant to demonstrate the skill of the designers and carvers. Theodor Behrens, who was responsible for the carving, adorned each chair with slightly different motifs and carved an inscription, including his name, on the back of this one. The original wool tassels of the fringe were bright pink as opposed to the gold that we see today.

The set of furniture was praised by the Art-Journal Illustrated Catalogue in 1851 for the carving “in the German-Gothic style of the middle ages.”  The chairs were especially praised while the sideboard received an “honourable mention” in the jury reports for the exhibition.

The sideboard and chairs were  installed in the Evening Drawing Room, part of the Royal Apartments on the first floor of Holyrood Palace, Edinburgh, in 1852. Victoria and Albert used Holyrood as a “stopping place” when they traveled to their Aberdeen estate, Balmoral. The  palace’s Evening Drawing Room was also furnished with a suite of furniture which was upholstered in crimson velvet. In 1863, Queen Victoria commissioned a watercolor of the room, showing two of these chairs flanking the sideboard, to record her happy memories of holidays in Scotland with Prince Albert.

Her Majesty's Furniture: The Wakefield Tapestry Chair, C. 1750

Part of an impressive suite which consisted of at least five armchairs and a sofa, this tapestry armchair was designed to show off the taste and wealth of the owner, and would probably have been displayed prominently in a drawing room or ornate reception room.

The suite was sold by Richard Wright and Edward Elwick of Wakefield, Yorkshire, who were working between 1745 and 1771--the pre-eminent firm of cabinet-makers and upholsterers in Yorkshire at that time. The chair's gilt frame is adorned with carved fish scales and acanthus leaves.

It was made for William Wentworth, 4th Earl of Strafford (1722-1791), for Wentworth Castle, Yorkshire. The Duchess of Northumberland wrote that she saw "French chairs emb'd [embroidered] with flowers upon Brown by the famous Mr Wright" upon a visit to Wentworth Castle in 1760.

Her Majesty's Furniture: A Chinoiserie Settee, 1760-1770

Click image to enlarge

Settee
England, 1760-1770
This and all related images from:
The Victoria & Albert Museum

In the mid-Eighteenth Century, wealthy English homes often featured pieces of furniture in the popular Chinoiserie style which was, at the time, associated with the work of famed cabinet maker Thomas Chippendale. Though Chippendale championed Chinoiserie, furniture in the delicate style was produced by a variety of furniture designers and makers. Chinoiserie saw a revival in the Nineteenth Century during which, between 1850 and 1900, a host of newer pieces were created using Eighteenth Century designs as models.

The piece pictured above, a settee, is likely to have been built during the earliest rise of the Chinoiserie look, perhaps sometime between 1760 and 1770. Since this settee has been made in one of the more prolific designs of the Nineteenth Century, some historians suggest that it’s a later piece. However, the carving and construction all point to Eighteenth Century creation.

The two-chair-back settee is made of carved mahogany, and features open arms and an upholstered seat raised on six square legs. The two raked chair backs boast one wide and two narrow panels of open fretwork which are framed by moderately splayed back stiles and a top rail carved with blind fret and a pierced pagoda cresting.

Her Majesty's Furniture: The Condesa de Valencia de Don Juan Armchair, 1790-1800

Armchair
Once owned by the Condesa de Valencia de Don Juan
Madrid, 1890-1890 or 1900
The Victoria & Albert Museum

When this elaborate and intricately-made chair was first given to the V&A in 1919, it was thought to have been made in Vienna.  However, recent research into the piece has shown that it is both visually and physically close to furniture designed for the court in Madrid between about 1790 and 1795. Still, since new ideas were spreading throughout Europe with before unheard of speed in the late Eighteenth Century, it is not surprising that very similar designs were made in Vienna around 1806 by Gottfried August Pohle.

The chair has been cleverly designed to showcase a range of different wood tones and metal mounts. Take, for instance, the central star, with its high carving and the tiny carved “swags” of fabric inside the upper arch of the back. These are crafted in darker wood against the lighter mahogany of the rest of the chair. The whole of the chair, including the outlining of the legs, is made more exciting with metal fillets, and ribbed gilt-bronze plaques.  The upholstery, a complex, damask of an unusual design—which is thought to be original--even highlights the design of the chair.  Stuffed with horsehair, the curve of the seat echoes the silhouette of the chair's impressive crest.

Object of the Day, Museum Edition: A French Mahogany Arm Chair, 1870

Armchair
French, 1870
This and all related images from:
The Victoria & Albert Museum

Here, we see an armchair of mahogany with gilt-bronze mounts. The arm supports are designed as winged sphinxes. This chair is the work of the French furniture makers at Jacob Fréres and is stamped as such. It is stenciled underneath with the inventory marks of the Palais de Tuileries and the number 27463. The number refers to its removal to the Garde-Meuble in 1826 from the Chateau de St. Cloud.

What’s curious is that though the inventory marks are genuine, the chair itself is a fake. It is not the chair that was removed from the Chateau de St. Cloud. It is, in fact, a newer chair from 1870 which was built on the frame of a much simpler chair. The original chair was the one which was supplied by Jacob Fréres between 1802 and 1803. Let’s look at the front legs. Aren’t they a bit out of proportion? The legs are, in reality, additions which were stripped from a table which had been built by Jacob Fréres.

In effect, we have a chair built in 1870 which someone has tried to give importance to by using the inventory numbers of an earlier chair built for Napoleon I. So, this is a con job along the lines of something Matt Bomer’s Neal Caffrey would have executed had White Collar been set in Nineteenth Century France. The forgery is quite clever and whoever did it took a great deal of time and effort to make it look convincing. Why? At this point, no one knows. It remains an attractive, if not poorly proportioned, mystery. 

Her Majesty's Furniture: The Strawberry Hill Chair, 1755

Ebonized Gothic Revival Chair, 1755
The Victoria & Albert Museum

This handsome chair was designed for the historian Horace Walpole, Fourth Earl of Oxford (and son of the first British Prime Minister), by his friend, the designer Richard Bentley who had been commissioned to design a chair with a back akin to the outline of a Gothic window.  Walpole asked that the chair be very lightweight, painted black, with a rush seat.  Bentley certainly delivered with this exquisite piece which he had constructed by the fashionable London cabinet-maker William Hallett.

Walpole was known for his collection of  furniture, however, he also frequently commissioned new furniture for his own use.  Later, he opened his lovely home to visitors and became one of the best-known exponents of the Gothic Revival style.

He was thrilled with this chair, and commissioned seven more to furnish the Great Parlor at his country residence, Strawberry Hill, in Twickenham which Walpole had modified in the Gothic Revival style.  As Walpole wished, the chair, like its cousins, is painted black to imitate ebony and boasts a back in the form of a gothic window with a drop-in seat with a black horsehair top cover.   The upholstery we see here was added in the Nineteenth Century.

Another from the set which shows the original caned seats which they all once had.

The Home Beautiful: The Darras Chair, 1900

The Victoria & Albert Museum


Exhibited at the International Exhibition in Paris in 1900--the exhibition which established Art Nouveau as the dominant modern style of decoration throughout Europe--this chair wowed the juries with its complicated design of undulating lines and the contrast of the formalized motifs on the leather panels depicting chestnut leaves, mistletoe and sprays of ivy.

The same foliate patterns are depicted in a much more realistic manner on the legs and back of the chair. This type of contrast in design was a speciality of the maker, A. Darras, about whom very little is known.

The sturdy frame is constructed of walnut, however, the original leather panels suffered from rot and were reproduced by the conservationists at the Victoria & Albert Museum who used the patterns originally employed by Darras himself.

Her Majesty's Furniture: The Richard Bridgens Chair, 1815

Chair, 1815
The Victoria & Albert Museum

Who doesn’t like a chair with a little fringe on it? While, the upholstery on this chair has been replaced, it has been done so using historical illustrations of the chair and by copying wool fragments of the original cover. Hidden under the upholstery, the chair is stamped with the numerals XXIV, suggesting that it was once a part of a large set which was housed at Battle Abbey.

Battle Abbey was founded by William the Conqueror on the site of the Battle of Hastings in 1066. The abbey was rebuilt by 1500. Between 1812 and 1822, Sir Godfrey Vassal Webster (1789-1836) , who inherited the abbey in 1810, ordered a massive program of restoration which included the reroofing of the medieval Great Hall and work on the former Abbot's house. Webster commissioned appropriate furniture, including this set of chairs which were used throughout the abbey.

The frame of the chair is of stained oak, partly gilded and painted crimson, with an upholstered back and seat and gilt brass adornment. The chair-back boasts rectangular upholstered panel which is flanked by two spirals and set between two cross rails, each of which is ornamented with five gilt-brass rosette studs. In the center of the crest is a large gilt-brass shield bearing the Webster family crest. The chair is upholstered in crimson cloth with a deep, dramatic fringe around the seat.