Piano

Details

Date: c. 1856-1860
Dimensions: 96.5 x 126 x 50.8
Object Type: furniture
Material: mahogany
Catalogue number: G58
Owner: Brown, Ford Madox, 1821, 1893
Manufacturer: Priestley, Frederick
Credit notes: Purchased with assistance from the V&A Purchase Grant Fund

The piano once belonged to the Pre-Raphaelite artist Ford Madox Brown who was fond of performing German music and English songs with his family and friends. It appeared as lot 4 in the sale of Madox Brown’s effects on Tuesday, 29 May, 1894, where it is described as having a panel designed by William Morris. The piano came into Madox Brown’s possession before 1860 as it was seen and admired by Edward Burne-Jones in the Madox Brown’s house, as described in Georgiana Burne-Jones’s “Memorials of Edward Burne-Jones”, 1904, vol. 1 p. 207:

“Mrs Catherwood gave us a piano (as a present for their wedding in 1860) made by Priestley of Berners Street, who had patented a small one of inoffensive shape that we had seen and admired at Madox Brown’s house; we had ours made of unpolished American walnut, a perfectly plain wood of pleasing colour, so that Edward could paint upon it. The little instrument when opened shows inside the lid a very early design for the “Chant d’Amour” and on the panel beneath the keyboard there is a gilded and lacquered picute of Death, veiled and crowned, standing outside the gate of a garden where a number of girls, unconscious of his approach are resting and listening to music.”

The Burne-Jones’s piano was given by the Burne-Jones family to the Victoria & Albert Museum in 1926 (Museum No. 43-1926.)

The patented Priestley piano had an ingeniously simplified piano action with only two moving parts as well as a compact soundboard.

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

Date: c. 1907
Dimensions: 140.5 x 64 x 45
Object Type: furniture
Catalogue number: G33
Designer: Voysey, Charles Francis Annesley, 1857, 1941
Credit notes: WMG purchase, 1962

Designed for the Essex and Suffolk Equitable Insurance company, Capel House, New Broad Street, London, E.C.2. The client who commissioned the work from Voysey on the Company’s behalf was S.C. Turner, for whom Voysey had designed The Homestead in Second Avenue at Frinton-on-Sea, Essex in 1905. The contractor for the work was F. Muntzer, a friend and pupil of Voysey. A perspective design view of the Board Room in the V&A Museum London shows the set of board-room chairs of which a third is in the V&A. Voysey described the scheme in ‘The Builder’, 1909: “We put in new windows, doors, fireplaces and floors and furnished the offices; everything being designed by me, even the calendars, ink-stands, pen tray etc. The principle we worked on was to have everything durable, and minimise the cleaning as much as possible. Thus the upkeep is reduced to a minimum. All the woodwork and furniture is in oak, left in its natural colour…” The present dark stain was added subsequently.

Details

Dimensions: 95.3 x 68.5 x 78.7
Object Type: furniture
Material: turned ebonised wood
Catalogue number: G38
Designer: Webb | Philip | 1831 | 1915
Manufacturer: Morris & Co.
Credit notes: Presented by J. and N. Larkin, 1967

The design of the chair was developed by Philip Webb, c.1866, although Warrington Taylor, the Firm’s business manager from 1865, seems to have been responsible for spotting the original prototype which formed the basis of Webb’s design. A note from Warrington Taylor to Webb contains a sketch of a smilar chair, annotated “back and seat made with bars across to put cushions on, moving on a hinge, a chair model of which I saw with an old carpenter at Herstmonceaux, Sussex, by name Ephraim Colman, your truly W. T.” It has always been supposed that the chair referred to above was an original piece of rural Sussex furniture; however a chair of a very similar design is illustrated in an early 19th century catalogue. Whatever the origins, the chair as designed by Webb for Morris went into production in the mid-1860s and became one of the Firm’s most popular items, still appearing in Morris & Co. catalogues as late as the first decade of this century. According to a letter in the Gallery files from the donor, Mrs Joan Larkin, (4th September, 1967) this chair (G38) originally belonged to the Morrises, and was presented to Dr Robert Steele by May Morris, daughter of William Morris. Robert Steele was May Morris’s executor, and after his death it passed to his family and finally to his grand-daughters, the Misses J and N Larkin, who presented it in 1967. A handwritten green tag, signed by Miss Larkin describes the armchair as “used by William Morris up to time of his death and for a great many years before..” and described in a letter by Joan Larken thus: “..it was a favourite armchair for W.M., he used to read over his writings and proofs therein as recalled by my grandfather,…Miss May Morris passed it on to him…” The chair was damaged in the Blitz (during the Second World War).
Originally the chair was upholstered in Morris ‘Utrecht’ velvet in green for the deep-buttoned back and seat cushions and arm pads; however it was re-upholstered in 1979-80 by the Gallery in Liberty’s reproduction Moris ‘Daffodil’ chintz in dark blue.

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.

Details

Dimensions: 4.4 x 9.8 x 9.8
Object Type: furniture
Material: wood
Technique: painted wood
Catalogue number: M2
Artist: Image, Selwyn, 1849, 1930
Credit notes: Mackmurdo Bequest, 1942

Small circular wooden box, lid painted with design of female head against a blue background. A band around the side of the box holds the Latin inscription: ‘O facies oculos nata tenere meos!’ This is taken from a poem in the second book of Ovid’s Amores and translates as: ‘Oh my face was born to hold my eyes!’

Details

Date: c.1909 - 1910
Dimensions: 97.2 x 43.8 x 45.7
Object Type: furniture
Material: oak and rush seat
Catalogue number: G68b
Credit notes: Presented by Miss Rhoda Wells, 1980.

One of four with G67, G69, G70. A sample of the chair is illustrated in the Morris & Company’s 1910/11 catalogue ‘Specimens of Upholstered Furniture’ no. 192 which was available in green or brown stain, priced at 14/- (=70 pence) with matching armchair no. 191, priced at 23/- (=£1.30p). The design is adapted from a traditional country type and is close to some of the furniture made by Ernest Gimson, such as G56. The chairs were apparently re-rushed c. 1970 by the Workshops for the Blind.

Details

Date: c. 1895-96
Dimensions: 109 x 60.5 x 30
Object Type: furniture
Catalogue number: G79
Designer and maker: Morris & Co.
Credit notes: Purchased with assistance from the Friends of the William Morris Gallery, 2017

This firescreen was produced by Morris & Co. The embroidery is ‘Clanfield’ design and was designed by either May Morris or Henry Dearle. The embroidery is of a high quality suggesting it was made in the Morris & Co. embroidery workshop, Morris & Co. also produced embroidery kits that could be worked at home. An example of ‘Clanfield’ is illustrated in ‘The Studio’ magazine for 1896-7 in a review of the 1896 Arts and Crafts exhibition, worked by Flora E.J. Hayman.

Details

Date: c. 1886
Dimensions: 201 x 259 x 86.4
Object Type: furniture
Material: satinwood, mahogany, brass and oil
Technique: repousse
Catalogue number: G14.5
Designer: Mackmurdo | Arthur Heygate | 1851 | 1942
Artist: Horne, Herbert Percy, 1864, 1916
Retailer: Century Guild
Manufacturer: Goodall & Co, King Street, Manchester
Credit notes: Mackmurdo bequest, 1942

It is possible that this cabinet was intended for Pownall Hall, but for for some reason not used there and remained in Mackmurdo’s possession. The cabinet is one of the Century Guild’s most ambitious pieces of furniture and was part of its display at the Manchester Royal Jubilee Exhibition in 1887. It was reviewed in ‘The Journal of Decorative Art (November, 1887) where ‘the simplicity and largeness of design’ was praised.

It is made of satinwood and carved mahogany with brass fittings and painted with vine tendrils, leaves and bunches of grapes. The inscription on cupboard doors is from Shelley’s ‘Prometheus Unbound’ : ‘nor heed nor see/what things they be/ but of these create he can/ forms more real than living man’. The upper section having a flat projecting cornice , supported at either end by single free-standing square pilaster with decorative carved capital, and three recessed cupboards – the two outer ones with hinged double doors, the centre one with a single door. The cupboard doors are fitted with brass keyhole plates with decorative repousse work. The interior of the cupboards lined with mahogany and furnished with mahogany shelves (detachable). The lower section contains a large central drawer, with two handles of similar repousse work, flanked at either side by a smaller cupboard, each with similar keyhole plates and tear-drop handles, the bottom coved and resting on a deep step base.

Details

Date: c.1856
Dimensions: 62.9 x 74.9 x 51.5
Object Type: furniture
Technique: painted wood
Catalogue number: H26
Attributed artist: Morris, William, 1834, 1896
Attributed designer: Morris, William, 1834, 1896
Credit notes: Presented by Dr C. E. Newman, CBE, FRCP, 1965

This rudimentary chair was designed by William Morris either for his lodgings in Red Lion Square, which he shared with Edward Burne-Jones in the late 1850s, or for Red House at Bexleyheath in the early 1860s. It features stylised birds and flowers in oil paints. The shape of the chair is thought to have inspired the similar chairs depicted by Burne-Jones in the first of his ‘Holy Grail’ tapestries, ‘The Summons’ which he designed for Morris & Co. for the dining room of Stanmore Hall in 1890.

The fictional chairs in Burne-Jones’s tapestry in turn inspired the real ones created by M. H. Baillie Scott in 1898 for Grand Duke Ernst Ludwig of Hesse’s New Palace at Darmstadt. From these ‘barrel chairs’ can be traced a numerous progeny of similar furniture by European and American designers of the 1900s. Morris’s chair was deliberately simple and could have been easily put together by a joiner rather than a specialist furniture maker.

Details

Date: c.1909 - 1910
Dimensions: 97.2 x 43.8 x 45.7
Object Type: furniture
Material: oak and rush seat
Catalogue number: G68a
Credit notes: Presented by Miss Rhoda Wells, 1980.

One of a set of four chairs (see G67, G69, G70). An example is illustrated in Morris & Co.’s 1910/11 catalogue ‘Specimens of Upholstered Furniture’, no. 192 which was available in green or brown stain, priced at 14/- (=70 pence) with matching armchair no. 191, priced at 23/- (=£1.30p). The design is adapted from a traditional country type and is close to some of the furniture made by Ernest Gimson (see G56). The chairs were apparently re-rushed around 1970 by the Workshops for the Blind.

Details

Date: c.1909 - 1910
Dimensions: 97.2 x 43.8 x 45.7
Object Type: furniture
Material: oak and rush seat
Catalogue number: G67
Manufacturer: Morris & Co.
Retailer: Morris & Co.
Credit notes: Presented by Miss Rhoda Wells, 1980.

One of a set of four chairs (see G68, G69, G70). An example is illustrated in Morris & Co.’s 1910/11 catalogue ‘Specimens of Upholstered Furniture’, no. 192 which was available in green or brown stain, priced at 14/- (=70 pence) with matching armchair no. 191, priced at 23/- (=£1.30p). The design is adapted from a traditional country type and is close to some of the furniture made by Ernest Gimson (see G56). The chairs were apparently re-rushed around 1970 by the Workshops for the Blind.

Details

Date: 1890-1892
Dimensions: 78.5 x 228.6 x 74.2
Object Type: furniture
Material: mahogany
Catalogue number: G64
Retailer: Kenton & Company (1891 - 1892)
Designer: Barnsley, Sidney Howard (1865 - 1926)
Credit notes: Presented by Mrs Anne Moro, 1978

This table (described in the records variously as an ‘architect’s table’, ‘refectory table’, ‘desk’) was made by Kenton & Co. around 1890-92. The firm, inspired by Morris & Co., was founded in 1890 by Ernest Gimson, Sidney Barnsley, W R Lethaby, Reginald Blomfield and others with the aim of designing and making furniture on Arts & Crafts principles. Lack of capital forced the company to disband in 1892, each partner taking a share of the remaining stock of furniture.
It would seem the table was acquired by the Barnsleys; according to Edward Barnsley, Sidney’s son (letter in WMG files, 3 December, 1979) “the mahogany table used to be in my uncle Ernest’s (Barnsley) sitting room library at Sapperton…. my memory is that I always thought it a very sensible, paracticial attractive piece. There was another one made on very similar lines but with drawers at the ends. Might have had two each end. With some inlay I think on edge of top, and on the drawer fronts, I think…” After the deaths of both Ernest and Sidney Barnsley in 1926, the table was acquired by architect, W R Lethaby.,The table appears in a photograph – one of a series taken at the Kenton & Co. exhibition at Barnard’s Inn, 1891 – on which are a series of mirrors designed by Reginal Blomfield. The table was lent by the donor to the Senior Common Room of the Central School of Art & Design for some years before donated to WMG.

Details

Date: c. 1890
Dimensions: 91.4 x 66.0 x 60.9
Object Type: furniture
Material: mahogany
Catalogue number: G61
Designer: Jack, George Washington Henry (1855 - 1931)
Retailer: Morris & Co.
Credit notes: Purchased with assistance from the V&A Purchase Grant Fund

George Jack probably designed this armchair for Morris & Co. around 1890. The wavy vertical rails under the arms are similar to a sideboard shown by Morris & Co. at the Manchester Jubilee Exhibition in 1887. When purchased the chair was patched with faded ‘Evenlode’ chintz, and reupholstered in ‘Lodden’ chintz in 1979, however it originally appears to have been upholstered in ‘Strawberry Thief’ chintz. Pieces of original fabrics and braid were retain. The armchair was originally purchased by owned by the parents of Francis Jane Lefroy whose house was furnished mainly by Morris & Co. in the 1890s.

Details

Date: c. 1885 - 1886
Dimensions: 127 x 45.7 x 50.8
Object Type: furniture
Material: mahogany
Catalogue number: G59
Retailer: Century Guild
Attributed designer: Mackmurdo | Arthur Heygate | 1851 | 1942
Manufacturer: Goodall & Co, King Street, Manchester
Commissioner: Boddington, Henry
Credit notes: Purchased with assistance from the Victoria & Albert Museum, London, Purchase Grant Fund

The chair is of exactly the same design as one shown by the Century Guild on their stand at the Liverpool International Exhibition, 1886. A photograph of the stand, taken by the London & County Photographic Co., shows the single chair on the left of the stand with a matching armchair nearby; both are upholstered in a fabric different to that on G59. (See also an illustration of the stand in The British Architect, Vol. XXVI, 1886, illustrated in article by Malcolm Haslam “A Pioneer of Art Nouveau; A H Mackmurdo”, Country Life, 6 March, 1975, p.576, illus.5).
The inscription “Boddington” on the label attached to G59 refers presumably to Henry Boddington, who commissioned extensive furnishings, decorative plaster-work and painted designs, stained glass and brass-work, from the Century Guild for his Cheshire country house, Pownall Hall. An article published in ‘The Art Journal’,1891 pp.329 – 335 and 353 – 357, reproduces a line-drawn illustration of the Dining Room (p.332) in which an armchair matching the single chair (upright, without arms) appears.

Details

Date: 1888-1914
Dimensions: 115.6 x 58.4 x 40.6
Object Type: furniture
Material: wood and rush seat
Catalogue number: G56
Maker: Clissett, Philip (08.01.1817 - 1913)
Credit notes: WMG purchase, 1972

This chair was made by Phillip Clissett, a chair-maker from Herefordshire. The chair is based on a traditional design, modified by the Scottish Arts and Crafts architect James Maclaren. The same chairs were used to furnish the Meeting Room of the Art Workers Guild in London. The simplicity of these chairs prompted the furniture designer and architect Ernest Gimson (1864-1919) to seek-out Clissett and learn how to make similar ladder-back chairs under his tutorage.

Details

Date: c. 1860 - 1940
Dimensions: 84.5 x 48.3 x 40.7
Object Type: furniture
Material: turned, ebonised wood with rush seat
Catalogue number: G54
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 (and another G55) 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.

Details

Date: before 1910
Dimensions: 144 x 102 x 41.8
Object Type: furniture
Technique: carved
Catalogue number: G52
Designer and maker: Jack, George Washington Henry (1855 - 1931)
Maker: Turner, Lawrence Arthur (1864 - 1957)
Credit notes: Presented by Misses Jessie and Margery Jack

This cabinet was designed by George Jack and made by Jack and Lawrence Turner. The cabinet is made of light oak with carved panel depicting shepherd, dog, sheep and lambs in a wattle pen. A drawing for the central part of the carved panel showing the ewe and ram is in the collection (A522). There are a few very minor differences between the drawing and the finished design of the carving. George Jack commented about the shape of the panel “It was begun without any premeditated intention as to use, the sloping end being the shape of the board as it came into the author’s hands, the other end being sloped off to match it.” (Wood-Carving Design and Workmanship by George Jack,1903)

Details

Date: c. 1907
Dimensions: 96.5 x 48.9 x 40.6
Object Type: furniture
Material: wood and rush seat
Catalogue number: G47
Designer: Gimson, Ernest (1864 - 1919)
Maker: Gardiner, Edward ( - 1958)
Manufacturer: Daneway Workshops
Credit notes: Presented by Helen, Joyce and Evelyn Brooks, 1971

With its pair, a settle and armchair of matching design, the suite was commissioned by William Edward Brooks FRIBA (1879 – 1945) from the Daneway House workshops at the time of his marriage in 1907. All were made to Gimson’s design by Edward Gardiner. Purchased in 1971 with its original rush seating.

Details

Date: c. 1890
Dimensions: 69.8 x 42 x 42
Object Type: furniture
Material: wood and rush seat
Catalogue number: G46
Credit notes: WMG purchase, 1970

Small corner chair with turned ebonised wood (possibly beech) framework, the two sides decorated with turned rails and two cruciform back supports, with removable rush seat, the legs tapering to small turned foot; the uprights, legs and rails decorated with narrow incised bands. Similar in style to the “Argylle” chairs (see plate 212 p. 136 “English Furniture 1880 – 1915” by Pauline Agius, published by Antique Collector’s Club, 1978) which appeared in Liberty’s catalogues c. 1890 “Dining Room and Library Furniture”, although these, like the Morris & Co. Sussex type rush-seated furniture, have rushing fastened directly to the wood framework, not a drop-in rush seat. Chairs with similar back design are published in Morris & Co. catalogues, but not this actual chair.

Details

Date: c. 1885 - 1900
Dimensions: 127 x 43.3 x 43.3
Object Type: furniture
Material: beechwood and leather
Catalogue number: G42
Attributed retailer: Liberty & Co, Ltd
Credit notes: WMG purchase, 1968

The chair seat is similar to the Liberty & Co. “Thebes” stool which was inspired by ancient Egyptian furniture and first used on chairs designed by Holman Hunt in 1856-7 and Ford Madox Brown c. 1858. Several versions of chairs with this type of seat were produced by different firms, including Liberty & Co. The “Thebes” stool by Liberty & Co. was closely modelled on the four-legged Egyptian stool at the British Museum (BM 2472) and the Liberty designs were registered at the Patent Offfice in 1884 and were products of Liberty’s Furnishing and Decorating Studio established under Leonard Wyburd’s direction in 1883.

Object Type: furniture

Pages

Archives

Categories