An oversize giltwood armchair, made as a pattern chair. The seat and back are upholstered in green velvet, the frame, with serpentine seat and back, shows multiple patterns of carving, as do the scrolling cabriole legs.

Armchair, of carved and gilded wood of rococo design, the seat, back and arm pads upholstered in dark green silk velvet. The shaped back is carved with asymmetrical scrollwork, with beading around the inner border, imitating the close nailing sometimes used on the edge of upholstered panels. The arms terminate in volutes. The arm supports are of square section carved with scale, money, husk and strapwork designs. The scrolling legs are of cabriole or console form. There are five different set of ornament on the arms and five different designs on the front and back legs. The upholstery, which dates, like the gilding, from the 1960s, is on removeable pads in the back and the arms (a technique known as à chassis upholstery) but the upholstery of the seat has been fixed in place.

The provenance is not known before the chair was purchased from Messrs Phillips of Hitchin (Registered file 59/1252). When acquired by the Museum the frame was painted in two colours and upholstered in yellow silk damask. The chair was re-gilded in the early 1960s. The earliest Museum photos show it in this form. It was re-upholstered with a blue material and a blue cushion made to match in 1969. The blue colouring of the tufts on the current upholstery may suggest that the now-green velvet was originally more blue.

Historical significance: The chair is probably a carver's pattern chair, made to show clients a choice of carved decoration. The form of the chair, with a carved frame to the upholstered back, was newly fashionable in the 1750s, when such chairs were descrbed as 'French chairs', though appearing in English pattern books. The design of the chair is in the style of Matthias Lock (d.1765).

This chair, showing several patterns of carving, was presumably made for use in a cabinet-maker's showroom or shop. The scale of the armchair is largely than standard and this may have been deliberate, to make the chair suitable for public showing.

The design is in the style of Matthias Lock

This grand armchair was evidently made as a ‘pattern chair’, showing several different options for the decoration of the arms and the legs. Some pattern chairs were made to commission for a client, so that he or she could then decide between the options proposed. This example, however, seems to have been made for display in the maker’s showroom rather than as a prototype of a chair for practical use, for it is too large to be comfortable, especially in the length of the seat. The naturalistic rococo ornament on the back and arms is combined with much more architectural ornament, in the style of William Kent, on the legs. It is unlikely that any customer would have ordered a suite mixing up these motifs, but they demonstrate very well the range of details that the maker could offer.

The ornament resembles designs by the carver Matthias Lock, but we do not know who made this ambitious chair.

W.5:1-1959