Prie-dieu chair, blackwood carved and pierced, c.1870, former Bombay Presidency, probably Mumbai or Gujarat, Western India.

Summary description
One of a pair of chairs of Bombay blackwood, carved and pierced, with upholstery on the seat. The back is detachable from the seat and slots loosely into the seat rail with a tenon. This is slightly the smaller of the pair and may have been carved for the bride. Both chairs are covered with similar motifs.

Decorative scheme
The chair back is richly carved with foliage. In the centre is a cartouche with a rearing beast with a leafy vine emitting from its mouth. The cartouche has an egg and dart border and leaves come out of that to form an outer border. Several birds with long tails and curved beaks are perching in the foliage, which is arranged in a broadly symmetrical pattern. In the middle of the central stem, below the cartouche with the beast, is a flower. The lowest section has an outline in the shape of an ogee arch outline forming a point from which the central stem rises. The surface of this area is plain, smooth and uncarved. The roughly semicircular shape of the main part of the arch is continued with an incised line running below the point. This may have been a guide in carving and may not have been intended to appear. The plain wood would be partly hidden by the upholstered seat cover. On the rear of the chair back, however, this arch shape is carved with an acanthus leaf motif. Apart from this, the rear is neither specifically decorated nor flat but to some extent follows in shape the carving on the front side with raised lumps where the foliage is but clearly identifiable bird and beast shapes where these appear on the front. In shape, the back of the chair is curved with the sides projecting forward then curving away to the rear all around the edge. The centre of the back is almost straight in the vertical axis.

The seat has four legs spreading outwards. The two front legs are each carved with snake-like beast's head at the top, pocked with tiny holes. Below this is a band of foliage and at the bottom of each front leg is the head of a beast with an open mouth with a pair of birds with long tails and curved beaks perching on its eyebrows and pecking its nose. The hide of the beast is pocked with tiny holes between strips of smooth wood and the neck has scales. The two back legs are more simply conceived and are carved but not pierced. Each of the two back legs has at the top the head of a lion from whose mouth issues a large piece of large-leafed foliage. At the bottom of each leg is a monster head with a singe bird perched on its eyebrows and pecking its nose. The seat rail is carved all the way round with foliage except where this is interrupted at the top of all four legs by the beasts' heads. However, whereas below the rail on the front and each of the two sides there is between the legs a deep apron in the shape of an inverted wave, carved with foliage falling to a rounded point, at the back the apron is narrow and not shaped, with a meandering vegetal scroll confined within two parallel horizontal lines.

Structure and materials
The chair has a separate upholstered seat which sits on top of the seat frame and is attached with four screws. The upholstered seat has a solid wooden base with one spring attached to this in the centre. The spring has a spring cover cloth (jute) then a filling (coconut fibre) and finally a stuffing cover (cotton). These materials are original to the seat but there is a new top cover of mohair.

Four pieces of a lighter-coloured wood are joined to the seat rail with screw holes for the upholstered seat to be fixed to.

A tenon is used to fit the back into the seat rail. The remains of an illegible label are stuck to the rear of the tenon and a double crescent is carved low down on the front on the plain wood within the arch shape which sits behind the upholstered seat. A double crescent is also carved on the top surface of the seat rail near where the tenon fits in.

While the curving edge on the right side of the chair back is integral, at the top and left side this is composed of a series of separate lengths of wood, carved to shape and attached to the chair back with screws at the rear.

Summary of later interventions/changes
The chair originally stood on peg feet. The textile cover is not original.

Given by Misses J. L. and B. Naylor

The chair belongs to one of the many types of furniture made in India that ultimately derive from European usages and were made initially for Europeans in India. The term 'Bombay blackwood' appears in English language newspapers in India from the late 18th century but from the mid-nineteenth century the terms refers to a style of very richly carved furniture made in the Bombay Presidency whose forms are based on 19th century European and American prototypes in the Rococo Revival style. The Presidency included a large part of western India and woodworkers from cities such as Ahmedabad and Surat in Gujarat, where there is a tradition of richly carved wooden house fronts, migrated to Bombay (now Mumbai) to work for Parsi entrepreneurs in the production of this furniture. The carving drew initially on traditional flower and foliage motifs but came to incorporate more animal motifs and European influences. Bombay Blackwood furniture was made in great quantities and was shown in numerous exhibitions in Europe and North America from London's Great Exhibition of 1851 onwards, although in the late nineteenth century it was increasingly criticised by Western commentators.

This chair is one of a pair. It is part of a suite of furniture that belonged to Mr and Mrs James Richard Naylor. They acquired it in Bombay, India, after their marriage in 1868. It belongs to a vast group of furniture called 'Bombay blackwood' because it was made in the Bombay Presidency out of blackwood. (Blackwood is a variety of rosewood.) 'Bombay blackwood' furniture is typically based on English furniture forms made from about 1850 to about 1880. However, it is highly carved, usually with foliage and mythical beasts.

IS.57-1983