Chair

This chair is typical of seat furniture made for the sitting room or parlour of middle- or upper-class Victorian households. Its form and carved elements are drawn from the mid-eighteenth century Rococo style, a style that had originated in France, a country whose tastes and fashions were held in high esteem in nineteenth-century Britain. Typical of early Victorian chairs, the front legs are richly carved and exposed, and the back is framed in carved wood. The original upholstery has survived in very good condition, as have the coiled metal springs underneath - a recently developed technique that gave the chair extra resilience and resulted in an increase in the depth of the upholstery.

As well as being necessary, the generous proportions of the back and seat gave the appearance of comfort and the needlework upholstery added a note of luxury. The back and seat are covered in Berlin woolwork, so-called because the first printed patterns and dyed wools came had come from Berlin (from 1804 onwards). Berlin woolwork was the most popular embroidery technique used in Britain between 1830 and the 1870s, and the motifs on this chair, with opulent bouquets of flowers - often, as here, full-blown roses and convolvulus - were popular motifs also found on carpets, wallpaper and papier mâché furniture at this time. A similar chair appears among a suite of furniture depicted in a watercolour made of the sitting room of a student at Christ Church, Oxford, in the 1850s (E.3253-1948).