Object Type
This writing desk is similar in form to a bureau, introduced in the17th century, in which a folding writing surface is combined with pigeon-holes and other storage space. However its designer, the architect C.F.A. Voysey (1857-1941), did not replicate the shape of conventional bureaux in this piece. Traditional bureaux often included details drawn from classical architecture, including columns, pediments and cornices, and the bases were enclosed cupboards. However, the lower section of this object is open, the writing surface does not fold up at an angle to cover the pigeon-holes and there is no architectural detailing at the top.
People
This desk was made for the home of William and Haydee Ward-Higgs in Bayswater, London. He was a successful solicitor, and the couple shared advanced artistic tastes. Voysey was the architect of many country houses, but on this occasion he only designed the interiors and furniture for an existing property. The desk is a unique piece of furniture produced for a particular client.
Subjects Depicted
The scene depicted on the pierced copper hinge plate shows a rural family group strolling through a pastoral English landscape, framed by an arrangement of heart motifs. This type of emblematic decoration demonstrates how central the ideas of home, family and England were to Voysey's architecture and domestic designs.
Design & Designing
The original design for the desk shows it stained green, with blood red leather behind a brass hinge. Neither of these coloured features was applied and the desk remained unvarnished, merely polished, as Voysey specified for much of his furniture, with hinges in copper rather than brass.
Physical description
Oak writing desk with broad, flat cornice supported by four uprights, between which (but not connected to) is a carcase, comprising an enclosed upper section with a door, containing a shelf, above an open lower section containing three pigeon holes. The writing surface is a hinged plank folding outward from the front of the open section of the carcase, supported on two integral sliders. The uprights surrounding the carcase are continuous with the legs below the level of the writing surface. There are stretchers to the right, left and rear of the desk. The front of the door has three decorative copper hinges, the upper and lower being identical, and the centre being the full width of the door, pierced to represent a pastoral scene of a family group walking in the countryside.
Place of Origin
England, Great Britain (made)
Date
1896 (designed)
Artist/maker
voysey, born 1857 - died 1941 (designer)
Reynolds, W. B., born 1855 - died 1935 (metal-worker)
Materials and Techniques
Unstained, unvarnished oak, with copper panel, hinges and fittings
Dimensions
Height: 167.6 cm, Width: 101.5 cm, Depth: 86.7 cm writing surface open, Depth: 67.3 cm writing surface closed
Object history note
Designed by C.F.A. Voysey in 1896 and presumably made as part of a commission to furnish the home of William and Haydee Ward-Higgs at 23 Queensborough Terrace, Bayswater, London in 1898. Maker unknown. Inherited by Mrs Joan Bottard, the Ward-Higgs's daughter, and sold by her to the V&A.
Descriptive line
Voysey writing desk, design 1896, made for W.Ward-Higgs, oak with copper mounts
Bibliographic References (Citation, Note/Abstract, NAL no)
Floud, Peter. Catalogue of an Exhibition of Victorian and Edwardian Decorative Arts. London: HMSO, 1952. 152p., p100
E.B.S. Some Recent Designs by Mr Voysey. The Studio. 1896, vol. 7, pp.209-218, ill.
The illustration of the cabinet on page 217 differs from the cabinet as constructed. In the drawing the upper and lower hinges are elongated across the width of the door (on the cabinet they are foreshortened). The drawing does not show the drop-down writing surface as built. There is a stretcher between the front legs on the drawing which is not present on the cabinet as constructed. There are no stretchers indicated on the design drawing, in which the cabinet is also stained green. The drawing suggests a dark surface behind a brass panel, possibly to indicate the 'blood red' leather on the design drawing (E.274-1913). This detail was not applied to the cabinet as built.
'But one thing is sure, that Mr. Voysey's furniture does not take kindly to its commercially produced relatives. To introduce objects - whether a dainty piece of colour like the painted clock, a simple and useful article like the writing-cabinet, the most refined and charming buffet, or a larger piece like the sideboard or the cottage piano (all illustrated here) - among modern cabinet work and upholstery is to introduce a discordant element.'
'Designers and Their Work. 1. -Mr. C.F.A. Voysey'. The Furnisher, Jan 1900, vol.1, pp.107-112, ill.
Photographs of 23 Queensborough Terrace
Hellman, Louis. 'Voysey in Wonderland', Building Design. 28 September 1973, no.169, pp.18-21, ill.
Illustration of design for central hinge.
Wilk, Christopher (ed.). Western Furniture 1350 to the present day, London: Philip Wilson and the V&A Museum, 1996, pp.180-181, ill.
'Voysey was not a cabinet-maker himself, unlike his more purist Arts and Crafts contemporaries, and he employed a variety of commercial firms to produce his furniture. Although the maker of this desk has not been identified, an inscription on the design indicates that the metal fittings were undertaken by the architect and metal-worker William Bainbridge Reynolds. Designs for other furniture for the Ward-Higgs's indicate they were intended to be made by the cabinet-makers F. Coote and F.C. Nielsen.'
Page, Marian. Charles F. A. Voysey. In: Art & Antiques, ed. Nineteenth Century Furniture. Innovation, Revival and Reform. New York: Billboard Publications, 1982. pp. 84-89, ill. ISBN 0-8230-8004-8
Illustrated. Caption: 'The desk, below, is gracefully ornamented with functional brass strap hinges pierced with a pastoral scene.'
Durant, Stuart. The Decorative Designs of C.F.A. Voysey, Cambridge: The Lutterworth Press, 1990. 96pp. Ill. ISBN 0-7188-2800-3.
p21. Illustration of a 'Design for a fretted metal panel for a staircase in a house in Hans Road, Knightsbridge, designed by Voysey, for Archibald Grove in 1891-2.' The panel depicts a group of four people, two men and two women, similarly dressed to the figures shown on the cabinet, progressing from left to right.
p.44. Illustration of a design for a workbox, c1893. The decoration depicts a man and women dressed similarly to those on the cabinet.
'The box was exhibited at the Arts and Crafts exhibition of 1893. It was of inlaid sycamore. The male figure - sketching - may well be Voysey himself; the female figure - knitting? - is thus likely to be his wife.'
Anon. An Interview with Mr. Charles F. Annesley Voysey, Architect and Designer. The Studio. 1893 vol.1, pp.231-237, ill.
The design for a workbox and the design for fretted-metal decoration of a staircase are both illustrated. See also Durant 1990.
Sinpson, Duncan. C. F. A. Voysey: An Architect of Individuality. London: Lund Humphries, 1979, pp.160, ill, ISBN 85331-426-8, p.59
If the small hand-painted clock-case is the best known small Voysey piece then another design of the same year - the design is dated Feb. 1895 - is surely the best known, though again not the most typical, large piece. This is the oak bureau or 'Writing Table' (as it is described on the design) made for W. Ward Higgs. For Ward Higgs Voysey carried out, at 23 Queensborough Terrace in London, the fully fitted interior from which much of the best surviving Voysey furniture comes. The bureau (25) [fig. 25; the drawn illustration of the cabinet from The Studio, 1896] stands on slender legs of octagonal section - the device of chamfering the supports from the square to octagonal section, used here and on the bed described above, became a distinctive trademark - which continue to the height of the moulded cornice at the top of the bureau. The carcase is slung between them, supported at desk-top and cornice level. The elegant lines of the piece are enhanced by a decorative panel in incised brass originally laid, the design notes, on blood-red leather. The panel depicts one of Voysey's beloved pastoral scenes of a strong medieval flavour. It is stressed on the design that the brasswork is not to be lacquered. Voysey does not, in this instance, specify the finish of the timber but we can take it that it was to be left clean, 'without stain or polish'. In conjunction with the unlacquered brass which would quickly dull we get a clear picture of a piece finished in scrubbed oak and dull greyish brasswork. This is how a piece of Voysey furniture was, without doubt, intended by its designer to look. [The bureau as made had copper rather than brass fittings.]
Karen Livingstone and Linda Parry, eds., International Arts & Crafts (V&A: V&A Publications, 2005), p.65.
Exhibition History
The Victoria and Albert Museum: Art and Design For All (Kunst und Ausstellungshalle der Bundesrepublik Deutschland, Bonn 18/11/2011-15/04/2012)
Life and Art: Arts and Crafts from Morris to Mingei (Aichi Prefectural Museum of Art, Nagoya 12/06/2009-16/08/2009)
Life and Art: Arts and Crafts from Morris to Mingei (Metropolitan Art Museum, Tokyo 24/01/2009-05/04/2009)
Life and Art: Arts and Crafts from Morris to Mingei (The National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto 13/09/2008-09/11/2008)
International Arts & Crafts (Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco 18/06/2006-18/08/2006)
International Arts & Crafts (Indianapolis Museum of Art 27/09/2005-22/01/2006)
International Arts & Crafts (Victoria and Albert Museum 17/03/2005-24/07/2005)
Carl and Karin Larsson, Creators of the Swedish Style (Victoria and Albert Museum 23/10/1997-18/01/1998)
British Design at Home (Tokushima Modern Art Museum 10/09/1994-06/11/1994)
British Design at Home (Kyoto National Museum of Modern Art 05/07/1994-21/08/1995)
British Design at Home (The Museum of Art, Kobe Hankyu 15/05/1994-21/08/1994)
British Design at Home (Saitama Prefecture Modern Art Museum 05/04/1994-05/05/1994)
Victorian and Edwardian Decorative Arts (Victoria and Albert Museum 24/10/1952-18/01/1953)
Labels and date
Arts and Crafts designs first came to the Larsson's attention in 1893, when they began to take the magazine The Studio. From about 1900 Arts and Crafts forms, especially those of Voysey, began to appear in the house. [1997]
WRITING DESK
ENGLISH; 1896
Oak with copper hinges and fittings
Designed by C.F.A. Voysey and made by W.H. Tingey for W. Ward Higgs. [NB now known not to be made by Tingey] [pre October 2000]
This desk was designed by Voysey as part of a suite for W. Ward Higgs, the otheir pieces of which are in the Cheltenham Museum and Art Gallery. A design exists in the Museum's Prints, Drawings and Paintings Collection showing blood red leather behind the brass panel and the oak stained green. Neither of these features were included in the version seen here. [1992]
International Arts & Crafts:
Writing desk
1896
English; designed by C.F.A. Voysey
Oak and copper
V&A:W6-1953 [17/03/2005]
Production Note
Reason For Production: Private
Reason For Production: Commission
Materials
Copper; Oak
Techniques
Cabinet making; Coppersmithing
Subjects depicted
Sheep; Family; Pastoral
Categories
Furniture
Collection code
FWK
