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.

A build-up of polish is evident in the stamped leather. Some kind of wash has also been applied to the front rail. There is an extensive repair to the back left upright beneath the back bottom rail. A large piece of the upright is missing at this point, and the section seems to have been strengthened by sliding a large (wooden?) plate into the gap. Both front feet have been replaced, and wooden plates have been added to the back feet. The back right foot has also been patched and filled. There is a (relatively new) cloth-covered board nailed to the back of the splat.

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)

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.

This distinctive type of Portuguese chair has generally been dated in the second half of the 17th century. It probably dates from much later, however, as it seems to be a response to a particular type of English chair, with caned seat and back, in a style that developed around 1715. English caned chairs were widely exported from London, from about 1670 up to the 1740s, to Europe, Asia and America, and they were also imitated in the centres that imported them. The English prototypes usually had a high arched top, repeated in a carved stretcher between the front legs. Most imitations were quite closely comparable to the originals, but the Portuguese responded in this much more idiosyncratic manner, replacing the carved and caned panels with embossed and incised leather. In this example the carved shell in the front stretcher is echoed by a shell embossed in the leather at the top of the chair-back, in a manner that recalls the English treatment.

789-1865