English, 1660-1700, 46/947, caned

High backed walnut chair with slightly raking rear legs and back; the caned back and seat. With carved and pierced crest rail and pierced front stretcher, on turned lower back legs and side stretchers, and carved front scrolling legs, and an unusual pierced mid-stretcher of B form.

The back of triple arch form with gadrooning above piercing, above a wide concave moulding that extends down the front surface of the back uprights and across the lower back rail of inverted triple arch form.
The caning (post 1911) very fine and close mesh, using the original holes of back and seat. The seat rails of rectangular form, the front and side rails with convex moulded outside edges, resting on the front leg at a dowel (visible PR). The middle stretcher of B form, moulded on its upper surface, with a central hole, presumably for a finial (missing).
The front legs carved with scrolls and turned in the upper part. The front scrolling stretcher of arch form with a central circular pierced hole, and gadrooning over the arch. The reverse of the crest with various gouged marks. The back uprights part carved where the mid-rail is jointed, perhaps to reduce the gap between the rear uprights (29mm thick) and the mid-rail c18mm.

The PL rear upright with multiple small punch marks forming the letter F just above the seat. The rear rail stamped GC.
Single pegging.
Repairs: some spliced in repairs to the reverse of the back. Loss to rear stretcher at PR, minor losses to the side stretchers. Loss to front lower edge of the back mid-rail. Two areas of damage to the back panel caning.

On loan to Plymouth City Museum and Art Gallery, 1938 - February 2014.

Bought for £12.10s from a dealer Major Charles.E.Earle of 25 Haverstock Hill, London 'with seat and back upholstered in green...the seat and back were originally caned - have been re-caned'. The chair (with W.64-1911 and W.65-1911) had belonged to a Mrs Cox, 16 Douglas Mansions, West End Road but had no earlier history. (Nominal File: Earler, Charles E. Major, MA/1/E35, 1910-911).

Stamped F on the right back upright, and GC on the rear rail; recaned since 1911 by Museum

Caned chairs appeared in England soon after the Restoration of King Charles II, and quickly became popular, being cheaper, lighter and less prone to dust and pest than their upholstered equivalents. They were widely recorded in middle-class as well as noble house inventories well into the first half of the eighteenth century. Both the technique and the material (rattan cane or calamus rotang split into long narrow strips) came from Asia. The canes were imported in large quantities by the East India Company to London, where the production of caned furniture was concentrated. Caned chairs were also exported from London in large quantities, so much so that in France they were known as chaises d'anglaise, and in the German states as englische Stühle. They were often used with a light seat cushion. Unlike upholstered chairs, caned chairs seem to have been produced through a subdivision of piece-work labour by journeymen joiners, turners, caners and carvers, who seem often to have stamped their work with initials, as on the rear rail (GC) and right rear upright (F) of this chair.

Circ.261-1911