Corner chair or writing chair of walnut, partly veneered, with drop-in seat, raised on cabriole legs, the two splats shaped but not pierced, beneath a continuous top rail forming back and arms

Walnut corner or writing armchair, raised on plain cabriole legs, with pointed pad feet, the two front seat rails serpentine in plan, with a rounded front corner. The back leg is simply turned and raked backwards, above a tall, in-scrolling foot (sometimes called a 'Spanish foot'). Above the seat rail the back and side legs continue as arm supports, turned as classical columns with slight entasis (swelling towards the centre) and collars at top and bottom. They support the continuous top rail, with raised upper section. The two splats, set between the turned uprights, show an outline of exaggerated urn form and are slightly curved in plan. They are veneered in well-figured walnut on a base of plain walnut. The front of the top rail is also cross-veneered with figured walnut, on a solid walnut rail. The rounded ends of the arms are each pierced with a hole in the centre. The back rails are cross-veneered in walnut on beech rails. The two front seat rails are cross-veneered with walnut (the grain running vertically), on rails of solid walnut. The seat is upholstered in horsehair, of satin weave.

Construction
The seat rails are shaped and tenoned into the legs. The rails are shaped on the underside with shallow arches, the flat areas to either side of these supported on the serpentine spandrel brackets attached to the three front legs. At the back, the spandrel brackets are not found, but there are rectangular sections of wood in their place, approximately 1.25 cm square in section, because spandrels would be difficult to attach to the diagonally set block of the raked back leg in any visually satisfactory manner. The two back rails have narrow battens of beech attached to the shaped inner surfaces, each attached with three nails, to support the drop-in seat, which is supported on the front rails in rebates cut on the inside, top edge.
The drop-in seat appears to have been modified. There is a frame in ash, 1.2 cm deep, with a shallow (7mm deep) frame of softwood set above this. The ash frame appears to be cut from one piece of timber and shows four breaks in areas of short grain. The shallow, upper frame is lap-jointed, and may have been added in the 20th century to strengthen the seat, which may itself date from no earlier than the late 19th century. The upholstery shows 5 cm wide black-and-white chevron webbing, with a jute base cloth above. There are 3 strips of webbing set laterally, and 3 back-to-front. The top cover of horsehair has been re-attached with man-made tacks over a calico stuffing cover that appears to be of relatively recent date.

Condition
There is damage to the back foot at the base and damage to the drop-in seat frame.

Bought from T. Charbonnier, The Art Gallery, Lynmouth, Devon, for £9. See Nominal File MA/1/C1032/1, RF 2389/08 We known nothing of its earlier history. When it was acquired it was descriped as 'Chipped, cracked, wormeaten'.

The form of such corner orwriting chairs may have derived from low-back Windsor chairs, which were popular for libraries in the eighteenth century. The splats however, relate to 'India back' chairs, developed in the 1720s and derived from Asian chair made in China but traded through India. A good account of such chairs, linking them to card playing in particular is given in G. Bernard Hughes, 'Arm-Chairs for Hooped Skirts', Country Life, 10 November 1960, pp. 1108-1109. Hughes notes a first published mention of the type in a sale catalogue of a furniture from 'a Great House in Arlington Street' [London] in January 1734. He also notes that such chairs were advertised by Catherine Naish in 1759 in The London Chronicle in June.

This chair was on long-term loan to the Harris Museum and Art Gallery, Preston from 1979 to 2002 (See Nominal File MA/1/P2052). When it was returned, it was noted that there was a stain on the Proper Right hand rest. It is likely that the stain was already there when the chair went on loan.

This form of chair, with a central, front leg, seems to have been developed in both France and England in the 18th century, specifically for writing at a table or desk. The front legs supported the writer's weight as they lent forward, and the shape meant that the arms were set further back from the front of the chair than on a traditionally shaped one.

This form of chair, which looks as if it had been designed to fit into a corner, was, in fact, developed as a useful chair for writing or for playing cards. The position of the central front leg supported the writer or card player as he or she lent forward over a table or desk, and the setting of the arm supports diagonally back from this meant that the chair could be drawn forward to a table, without the arms forming an obstacle. Variants of this design with a central front leg were made in many states in Europe. The use of a continuous top rail, forming both back and arms, may relate to low-back Windsor chairs, which came into widespread use in the early 18th century and were particularly popular for libraries from the 1730s.

267:1-1908