Exactness In Dating

Description

This section is from the book "English Furniture", by Frederick S. Robinson. Also available from Amazon: English Furniture.

Exactness In Dating

The first and most elaborate chairs, of the end of the seventeenth century, are those numbered 337 and 338, and four (Nos. 3302-5), lent by Mr. Massy-Mainwar-ing. These come from old Richmond Palace, and unquestionably show the influence of the designs of Daniel Marot. He was born in 1650, and died about 1700. A Huguenot refugee, he came to England with William III., as his architect, and has left his traces in some of the mirrors and gueridons at Hampton Court. | No. 337 has two turned uprights and a broad central piece in the back, carved with a vase of flowers resting on a ledge, with the hanging diapered cloth which appears in French furniture, especially that of Boulle, for which Marot's designs were also used. No. 338 is similar to No. 3305, belonging to Mr. Massy-Mainwaring. It has five uprights in the back, and a considerable amount of crossing strapwork. All four of his chairs have the ' leaf rosette, as I have called it above, on the lower end of the uprights: two have it also at the top.

One shows the convex and concave curves also mentioned before.

There are reproduced in Plate lxix.2 two chairs of very similar design and quality to these fine examples in the Victoria and Albert Museum. The first is the arm-chair from Kingsbridge Church referred to before. It has the convex and concave curves on each side of the centre of the back, together with fan-shaped arrangements of conventional leaves, which suggest the more obvious scallop-shell of a few years later, and what I have called the fan pattern of the old oak period. Its legs with gadrooned shapes and X-shaped stretchers render it a fine example in oak of the chair of Louis XIV. influence.

Plate LXIX.

I - Arm-Chair, Oak End Of 17th Century

2 - Chair, Walnut Late 17th Century 3 - „ ,. 1700 Circa

LXIX. (1) Armchair, oak. End of seventeenth century. Kingsbridge Church, Devon.

Height 51½ inches. By kind permission of the Vicar.

(2) Chair, walnut. Late seventeenth century.

E. Hockliffe, Esq.

Dimensions: Height 49¼, Breadth 18½, Depth from front to back 19 inches.

(3) Chair, walnut, 1700 circa. Vincent J.

Robinson, Esq.

Quite as fine is an example belonging to Mr. Vincent J. Robinson, Parnham, Beaminster. This has also gadroon shapes on its legs, and similar X-shaped stretchers, with finial where they cross in the centre. It is of walnut, and when exhibited at Bethnal Green was dated about 1660. It bears, however, the strongest traces of Marot's design. The front of one of his clock-case designs has such very similar strapwork shapes to those on this fine chair that it must be attributed to his influence, and therefore placed near the end of the century.

Reproductions are here given (Plate lxviii.) of some of a series of chairs of this period mostly in possession of Mr. E. Hockliffe, The Hall, Uppingham. They give a fair idea of the varieties of shape to be found amongst the ordinary furniture as contrasted with the more grandiose examples from old Richmond Palace, and those finely carved specimens, some of which may be English, in the manner of chairs styled ' Louis XIII. and XIV.' One has a cherub's head winged between two acanthus, or perhaps palm, leaves at the top of the back. The centrepiece of the back has an oblong of cane in a wooden frame pierced and carved with leafage. There is a space of about one inch between this middle piece and the spiral uprights. There is scroll leafage carved upon the edges of the seat both on the top and the front. The stretcher below the seat shows the cherub and leafage over again, and there is a spiral rail below and behind the stretcher. There is the usual rosette on square parts of legs and uprights, and usual acorn finials.