Box table with hinged lid

Details

Date: c. 1890-1899
Dimensions: 70.9 x 59.7 x 32.4
Object Type: furniture
Catalogue number: G53
Designer and maker: Jack, George Washington Henry (1855 - 1931)
Credit notes: Presented by Miss Jack, 1972

The associated original design (A523) indicates that this table was originally intended to be decorated with different coloured wood inlay. The table was possibly made and designed as a workbox for George Jack’s wife Annie’s embroidery. When exhibited in 1899 the table was described as a ..”very entertaining little work table.., the construction of which seems somewhat frail even for feminine use, but one can forgive that, since it is painted in the gayest fashion imaginable”.

Details

Dimensions: 3.0 x 11.8 x 5.6
Object Type: furniture
Technique: carved
Catalogue number: H4
Artist: Unknown
Owner: Morris, William, 1834, 1896
Credit notes: Presented by Dr. Robert Steele, 1942

A snuff box used by William Morris of unknown, possibly Indian, origin. May Morris in her “Introduction to the Collected Works of William Morris” vol. XIII p.xix records: “He (Morris) took pleasure in all sorts of beautiful and precious boxes, and he prized certain trinkets, keepsakes from friends, such as an inlaid snuff box of choice work, though his everyday snuff-box was a somewhat plain silver one, and he carried his tobacco in a shabby little home-made bag of blue chintz – sometimes, until found and impounded by one of us, in a bank-bag tied with a bit of tape.”

The silver snuff box was given to Philip Webb by Jane Morris after Morris’s death. The blue tobacco pouch is in the Gallery’s collection (H28).

Details

Date: c. 1890s
Dimensions: 121.9 x 71.8 x 59.7
Object Type: furniture
Material: mahogany, stained woods, damask
Catalogue number: G60
Attributed retailer: Liberty & Co, Ltd
Credit notes: Presented by Miss Freeston, 1975

Mahogany armchair with high back decorated in centre with inlaid panel in stained woods of stylised tree, the top of the back and sides having inlaid stylised plant forms in stained woods, the lower armrests terminating in finials with flat capping tops similarly inlaid. Back, seat and sides upholstered in machine woven damask with pattern of tulips in green and pink picked out in machine woven tapestry. Similar in style to furniture designed by Leonard Francis Wyburd, who ran the Liberty design studio for Liberty & Co. (eg. Music cabinet – D1 in catalogue of Liberty Exhibition, V&A Museum, London, 1975, illus. p. 43.)

Details

Date: 1880s
Dimensions: 83.8 x 53.3 x 48.3
Object Type: furniture
Material: wood and rush seat
Catalogue number: G65
Retailer: James Shoolbred & Co. (c.1820 - 1931)
Credit notes: Presented by Mr Alan Green, 1978.

James Shoolbred & Co. was a furnishing, decorating and cabinet-making company, with premises at Tottenham House, Tottenham Court Road, London and retailed reproduction furniture in a variety of styles viz. ‘Adam’, ‘Medieval’, ‘Queen Anne’, and ‘Louis XVI’ (see illustrated catalogues 1874-89); still extant in 1928 when the company showed an exhibition of ‘Modern Furniture’ by the French Decoration Interieure Moderne group who had shown at the 1925 Paris Salon des Artistes-Decorateurs exhibition. This chair is one of a pair (see: G65b).

Another identical chair (not ebonised) with the Fine Arts Society, Bond Street in 1979.

Details

Date: c. 1863
Dimensions: 88.9 x 50.8 x 45.7
Object Type: furniture
Material: wood and rush seat
Technique: painted wood
Catalogue number: G77
Manufacturer: Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co.
Attributed designer: Rossetti | Dante Gabriel | 1828 | 1882

In style and construction thsi armchair complements Morris & Co’s range of ‘Sussex’ chairs, also based on traditonal types, which the Firm manufactured from the mid-1860s. The earliest known illustrations of the ‘Rossetti’ chair date from mid-July 1863, where it appears in photographs taken by William Downey in the garden of Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s house, Tudor House, Cheyne Walk, Chelsea, London, of William Bell Scott, Rossetti and Ruskin. See the chair in the right corner of the room in Henry Treffry Dunn’s gouache of 1882 (National Portrait Gallery) of Rossetti reading his ‘Ballads & Poems’ to Theodore Watts-Dunton in the drawing room at Tudor House, 1882, which has red-painted decoration similar to this example. Although the design of the chair is credited to Rossetti, its style suggests origins in French provincial furniture.
Made by Morris & Co. as part of its rush-seated furniture range, the chair continued to be made well into the 20th century, see the Morris & Co. catalogue c. 1911 ‘Specimens of Upholstered Furniture’ where it was priced at 16/6. The examples with additional red painted decoration, as G77, are uncommon and were probably made to special order; a few green-stained examples are also known.

Details

Date: c.1860s
Dimensions: 86.4 x 49 x 41.3
Object Type: furniture
Material: turned, ebonised wood with rush seat
Catalogue number: G27a
Manufacturer: Morris & Co.
Retailer: Morris & Co.
Owner: Brown, Ford Madox, 1821, 1893
Credit notes: WMG purchase, 1957

The William Morris Gallery holds a variety of chairs and settles from the Morris & Co. Sussex range. This example with plain, not turned rails is considered to be one of the earliest. The chair, one of a pair with G27b, was owned by Ford Madox Brown, one of the original founders of Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co. The pair of chairs were purchased from the sale of his effects by his friend and executor, R. S. Garnett. Garnett’s daughter, Mrs R. Nickalls, later inherited the chairs and sold them to the William Morris Gallery in 1957.

Details

Date: designed c. 1860s
Dimensions: 84.5 x 48.3 x 40.7
Object Type: furniture
Material: turned, ebonised wood with rush seat
Catalogue number: G29
Manufacturer: Morris & Co.
Retailer: Morris & Co.
Credit notes: Presented by Miss A. Rigby, 1961

Rush-seated armchair in turned, ebonised wood frame and rush seat. This chair has been widely attributed to the designer Philip Webb in the early 1860s. It was manufactured by Morris, Marshall, Faulkner and Co. and continuously produced by Morris & Co. until the twentieth century. The full range include armless chairs and a three-seater settle. The name ‘Sussex’ chair can be attributed to Morris’s biographer J.W. Mackail who commented that the chair was adapted from a country chair found in Sussex. Black or red Sussex chairs were used in Morris’s first family home Red House. Another earlier version of this armchair without the vertical spindles in the back was also produced by the Firm, see G27a&b.

Details

Date: designed c. 1860
Dimensions: 84.5 x 48.3 x 40.7
Object Type: furniture
Material: turned, ebonised wood with rush seat
Catalogue number: G55
Manufacturer: Morris & Co.
Retailer: Morris & Co.
Owner: Jack, Jessie, Miss (1894 - 1972)
Credit notes: WMG purchase

Rush-seated armchair in turned, ebonised wood frame and rush seat. This chair has been widely attributed to the designer Philip Webb in the early 1860s. It was manufactured by Morris, Marshall, Faulkner and Co. and continuously produced by Morris & Co. until the twentieth century. The full range include armless chairs and a three-seater settle. The name ‘Sussex’ chair can be attributed to Morris’s biographer J.W. Mackail who commented that the chair was adapted from a country chair found in Sussex. Black or red Sussex chairs were used in Morris’s first family home Red House and this example was acquired from Jessie Jack, who’s parents George and Annie Jack, both worked for Morris & Co. Another version of this armchair without the spindles in the back was also produced by the Firm, see G27a&b.

Object Type: furniture

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