Description
An elegant early 18th-century red walnut armchair, circa 1730.
This smart and useful desk chair (or ‘occasional’ chair) has a slip-in seat covered in point d’Hongerie.
Of deep patinated colour with some evidence of historic restoration. Very sturdy in the joints, ready to use.
That great world-authority Ralph Edwards C.B.E. F.S.A in his ‘Shorter Dictionary of English Furniture from the Middle Ages to the Late Georgian Period’ illustrates a closely related walnut chair no. 60 on p. 131. ”A walnut chair, plain splat and turned stretchers; narrow cabriole legs end in club feet, later the bowed shape of the uprights become more pronounced, the seat rail serpentine or convex’’.
The turned stretchers, elegant, vase-shaped back splat help to date this chair to the early George II reign, whereupon stretchers largely ‘become superfluous’.
This sophisticated antique armchair is in solid Virginia walnut (juglans nigra) which was frequently used from the later period of Queen Anne’s reign (1702-1714). Incidentally the earliest imports of mahogany into England occur circa 1725. A noteworthy and special detail in this carver chair is revealed in the elegantly-shaped top rail. It is possible that this example has American origins (vis. ill. no. 2231, Wallace Nutting ‘Furniture Treasury mostly of American origin, all periods of American furniture with some foreign examples’ (1954). A Philadelphia arm owned by Mrs. Francis P. Garvan.)
References:
NY Times – Antiques: Mrs. Francis P. Garvan’s Americana – https://www.nytimes.com/…/antiques-mrs-francis-p-g…amples in America’, Nov 6th, 1970, illustration 2231.
