Chair, of turned and carved walnut, the top of the back arches, the front stretcher carved with a similar outline. The seat and back are upholstered in stamped leather.

A turned, carved and stained walnut chair with its original seat and back covers of stamped leather, trimmed with large, simulated nails, which would originally have been polished to contrast with the leather. The high back, raised above the canted seat, has a stepped arched top and an inversely -- but less steeply -- shaped bottom edge. Below the seat the legs are strengthened with three turned stretchers, at the back and sides, and with a carved front stretcher, its arching scrolled mouldings above a scallop shell echoing the top of the chair-back.

Most of the frame is made of walnut, with the exception of the seat rails, which are oak, and the top and bottom rails of the chair-back, which are softwood (possibly pine). The leather seat cover is made from a single piece of stamped leather, which is wrapped under the seat rails. Two small sections of the leather seat cover are also attached to the front face of the back uprights (just above the seat). The leather is trimmed with very large brass-covered pine domes, simulating spaced nailing; these are probably dowelled through the leather into the frame. The edges of the seat are trimmed with a separate strip of leather. The stamped leather chair-back cover is fixed to the front face of the back, and trimmed at the borders with a separate strip of leather. There are two similar, but non-matching, metal (probably iron) finials at the top of each back upright. All of the joints are tenoned, and the tenons of the side stretchers are stop-pegged in the legs.The leather back panel design of scrolling floral ornament with two birds (lower left and right), and a shell lunette above, centred on a coat of arms with helm and lion above; the seat with scrolling symmetrical ornament.

Repairs
Seat leather badly ripped (and a loss at PR rear corner). This is in less good condition than its pair (788-1865).

Bought from Sen. Blumberg, Lisbon for £3 described as 'Chair. Chestnut wood, the seat and back formed of leather embossed and incised in arabesque pattern, in centre a shield of arms with helmet and crest: the framing decorated with large gilt headed nails.'

This chair and its pair (788-1865) were bought at a time when the Museum was buying extensively in Spain and Portugal (see comment 2018), with Sir John Charles Robinson, Superintendent of Art Collections for the South Kensington Museum (as the V&A was then known) making extensive buying trips in the area.

For leather-work of this type, see Franklim Pereira, O Couro Lavrado no Mobilário Portuguêse (2016)

This chair was on loan to Plymouth City Museum and Art Gallery (probably from c. 1951 to 2002) and Buckland Abbey (2002 to 2013).

Robert C. Smith, Portuguese Furniture of the Seventeenth Century I, Connoisseur April 1959, p.194-7, identies several distinctive features in cadeiras de sola (leather chairs): the turned frame (generally not used in Spain), the enlarged, boldly carved front stretcher (usually with a shell, leaf or flower), the brass finials on the back legs (particularly elongated after 1662), the leather seat and back (fastened with large, brass studs) with elaborate scrolling ornament.

LISBON, Museo Nacional de Arte Antiga: Portuguese Furniture – Collection Guide. (Lisbon, 2000) p.31 (figs. 35, 37)
As in other European countries the chair backs in Portugal after 1650 increased in height, and adopted a shaped crest rail. The design of the leather back often incorporated a central coat of arms or vase, where previously foliage was found.

Portuguese chairs in this style, and in particular with these distinctive embossed leather back- and seat-covers, have been dated to the second half of the 17th century by Portuguese scholars, but this dating seems much too early, as the type seems undoubtedly to be a response to the widely exported, caned, 'English chair', in a style that developed around 1715.

No directly dated examples of these Portuguese chairs are known, but a damask-covered armchair of very similar form, from the Convento dos Remédios, Braga, is dated 1733 (Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga, Lisbon, inv. no. 484 Mov; published in Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga, Portuguese Furniture Collection Guide (2000), p. 61, cat. no. 40).

The coat of arms on the present chair, if it could be identified, might provide a further important clue to the dating of this type.

Chairs like this were known in Portugal as cadeiras de sola (leather chairs). Embossed leather for the seats and backs of chairs had been in widespread use since the early 17th century, fixed with rows of prominent and contrasting round-headed nails. Particularly distinctive features of Portuguese chairs like this one, are the round metal finials on the tops of the back legs, and the elaborate scrolling ornament of the back panel, which is centred on a coat of arms (not yet identified). As in other European countries, fashionable chairs in Portugal became taller in the second half of the 17th century. Chairs like this have traditionally been dated 1650-1700, but the arched form of the back and the front stretcher may derive from early 18th-century English chairs.

This chair was purchased for the Museum in Lisbon in 1865, some years before London firms began reproducing Spanish and Portuguese furniture during the 1880s.

788-1865