Double settee with carved back and legs, seat upholstered in yellow. English, 1850-1870 in the style of circa 1760, mahogany.

Settee of carved mahogany with decoration in relief. It was reupholstered by the Museum in 1981 with a plain, cream-coloured, woven fabric and trimmed with braid. The back is in the form of two connected chair backs. The two openwork splats are in the form or a four looped ribbons tied in a bow with interlacing ends supported by outward facing C curves. The splats are comprehensively reinforced with a later iron armature at the back. The back rail is decorated with rocaille carvings. The ‘S’ shaped arms have scrolled ends and curved supports decorated by rococo scrollwork and acanthus leaves.

There are three cabriole (curving) front legs and two plain backward-curving back legs. The knees and feet of the front legs are carved with rococo ornament of foliage, a scallop shell in a cartouche and scrollwork. The back is executed very closely after a design by Thomas Chippendale (The Director, 1st edition, 1754, pl. XVI) and of a type described by him (ibid pl.IX) as ‘Chair with Ribband backs’.

Bequest of Mrs M. L.C. Money

Bequest of Mrs M.L.C. Money. Mrs Madeline Money first contacted the museum on 11 December 1920, to inquire whether the museum would be interested in taking loan of a Chippendale ‘Ribbon-back’ Settee for a period of six months. The museum took loan of the settee on 17 December 1920 where it remained on display in the ‘Loan Court '. In 1923 the settee was returned to Mrs Money, as the ‘Loan Court’ was being re-decorated. On 9 March 1965 the settee was bequeathed to the Museum by Mrs Money.

By 1965 another settee and four chairs from the same suite were already in the Museum collection. When acquired by the Museum in 1935 as part of the bequest of Mr C.B.O. Clarke, this suite, comprising settee (W.64-1935) and accompanying chairs, (Museum numbers W.65, 65A,65B & 65C-1935) were thought to have been made in about 1760, shortly after the design on which they were based was published: Thomas Chippendale, The Gentleman and Cabinet-Maker's Director, 1st Edition (1754), plate XVI, 'Ribband Back Chairs', left-hand design.

Delves Molesworth, Keeper of Furniture and Woodwork at the V&A considered the second settee 'if possible even a little finer' than the matching one already in the collection, adding that 'of this type we cannot have too much'.

However, physical investigation suggested that the suite was made in the second half of the 19th century, and in 2015 supporting historical information supporting a date of the late 1850s or 1860s was discovered and published (see references). The suite appears to have been made for a mining engineer and colliery supervisor in Northumberland, John Robinson Liddell (1826-1887) and his wife Hannah Isabella, nee Matthews (1827-1911). It is likely that that the suite was made in Newcastle upon Tyne, possibly for example, by Sopwith & Co.ere sold at Christie's, 1 May 1930.

Ribbon-backed seats were among the most decorative of Thomas Chippendale's published designs. Chippendale commented on the design, in the The Gentleman and Cabinet-Maker's Director, 1st edition 1754, 'Ribband Back chairs.... which, if I may speak without vanity, are the best I have ever seen (or perhaps have ever been made)'. In the 19th century furniture makers reproduced Chippendale designs to meet a demand for 18th-century style furniture. Many examples appear, like this set, to have been made after 1850, as fashionable reproductions and after about 1890, when antique-collecting grew in popularity, as fakes intended to deceive. When it was bequeathed to the Museum this suite of seat furniture was thought to have been made in about 1760, but more recent physical investigation and documentary research suggests that it was probably made for John and Hannah Liddell, for a house at Netherton in Northumberland, where they lived from 1858 to 1877. The suite originally consisted of six or eight chairs and two settees, of which the two settees and four chairs are in the Museum's collection.

This object is on loan to Sewerby Hall.

W.6-1965