'Lanarth' Windsor armchair, painted green, made by Stewart Linfold, under the direction of John Bonython, England, 1979.

A beech chair painted green with an elm seat and ash bent parts and crest rails. It has a shaped crest rail with rounded ends supported by eight spindles. There is a bobbin motif near the bottom of the leg and an overlap near the top.

In a letter to the Museum (May 1979), John Bonython provided details about the production of the chair and the attached label, as follows:

‘The new Lanarth chairs are made for me & under my direction by Stewart Linfold. They are made of beech with elm seats and ash bent parts and crest rails. The V&A’s Lanarth is painted a green that is influenced by the colours to be found on the original Lanarth and, perhaps mainly, by the colour that seems to be shown on the Windsor chair in Francis Wheatley’s portrait group of Mr & Mrs Richardson.
The label was printed by the John Roberts Press. Its design owes a great deal to examples of C 18 trade cards in Ambrose Heal’s ‘London Furniture Makers’; to Anthony Burton who knew how to do it and who to go to and to Bernard Roberts who actually did it with taste and care.’

In 1984 Dennis Jay Young wrote to the Museum from California, identifying himself as the maker of this chair for Stewart Linford. He had trained in Japan and worked between 1975 and 1978 as a chairmaker in High Wycombe and he was the only person at that time to make the 'Lanarth' chairs for Stewart Linford.

The design is copied from an 18th century Windsor armchair acquired by John Bonython from a manor house in Lanarth, Cornwall, and since called 'The Lanarth chair'.

In a letter to the Museum (May 1979), John Bonython provided details about the production of the chair and the attached label, as follows:

‘The new Lanarth chairs are made for me & under my direction by Stewart Linford. They are made of beech with elm seats and ash bent parts and crest rails. The V&A’s Lanarth is painted a green that is influenced by the colours to be found on the original Lanarth and, perhaps mainly, by the colour that seems to be shown on the Windsor chair in Francis Wheatley’s portrait group of Mr & Mrs Richardson.
The label was printed by the John Roberts Press. Its design owes a great deal to examples of C18th trade cards in Ambrose Heal’s ‘London Furniture Makers’; to Anthony Burton who knew how to do it and who to go to and to Bernard Roberts who actually did it with taste and care.’

This style of chair has been described as a 'stick-backed comb-backed colt's footed Devis-type Windsor Armchair'. The 'Lanarth' chair was made for John Bonython under his direction by Stewart Linford and is copied from an eighteenth century chair from an eighteenth century manor house in Lanarth, Cornwall.

Bonython observed that, had he not seen the V&A's Rural Chair exhibition (1973-4), he probably would not have been able to identify the chair, which had come from the the gun room of the manor house, when he saw it in a barn by the road in Cornwall, 1974.

The choice of green paint is influenced by the colours on the original Lanarth chair and, perhaps mainly, by the colour that seems to be shown on the Windsor chair in the painting, 'Portrait of Mr and Mrs Richardson' by Francis Wheatley (1747-1801).

W.43-1979