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On loan

  • On display at Houghton Hall, Norfolk

Footstool

ca. 1732 (made)
Artist/Maker
Unknown
Place of origin
Great Britain (made)

On loan to Houghton Hall.

Object details

Category
Furniture
Object type
Footstool
Materials and techniques
Legs and seat frame of beech, pine and walnut, oil gilded, partially over a sanded ground; cover (joined) of green velvet with applied silver-thread decoration; structural upholstery of linen, linen webbing and horsehair
Velvet
Beech
Pine
Walnut
Linen
Horsehair
Metal Thread
Carving
Upholstery
Gilding
Embroidery
Brief description
Footstool, carved and gilded walnut, green velvet cover with silver-thread decoration, Britain, ca. 1732
Physical description
Footstool, the top rectangular with rounded top corners; cabriole legs terminating in paw feet, the top of the legs carved with lion masks; the deep seat rails curved in profile and carved in the centre front with a satyr mask and in the centre of the sides with shells, all flanked by scrolling foliage. Cover of green velvet with silver-thread decoration (joined).

The top cover of dark-green velvet with applied metal-thread embroidery is not original to the stool, but is sewn to green velvet which may be the original top cover. The lower velvet is fixed to the frame and trimmed with a modern braid along the bottom edge. The metal-thread embroidery presumably is original to the top velvet; the two motifs point in from diagonally opposite corners, and the two velvet panels to which they are fixed are joined in a wavy seam (running roughly between the other two corners). So these were presumably made as corner motifs, perhaps for curtains; they match the motifs on W.50-2002.
Dimensions
  • Approx height: 47cm
  • Maximum, at feet width: 67.7cm
  • Of seat width: 60cm
  • Maximum, at feet depth: 50.5cm
  • Of seat depth: 43cm
Credit line
Accepted by HM Government in lieu of Inheritance Tax and allocated to the Victoria and Albert Museum
Summary
On loan to Houghton Hall.
Bibliographic references
  • West, Annabel, Fringe, Frog and Tassel. The Art of the Trimmings-Maker in Interior Decoration in Britain and Ireland (London: Philip Wilson and the National Trust, 2019, ISBN 978 1 78130 075 6), pp. 97-98, fig. 5:13
  • Geoffrey Beard, Upholsterers and Interior Furnishing in England 1530-1840 (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1997), p. 181.
  • Gill, Kathryn, 'Eighteenth-century close fitting detachable covers preserved at Houghton Hall: A techinical study', in Kathryn Gill and Dinah Eastop eds., Upholstery Conservation Principles and Practice (Oxford, 2001), pp. 133-144.
Collection
Furniture and Woodwork Collection
Accession number
W.52-2002

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Record createdApril 30, 2003
Record URL
https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O80389/footstool-unknown/
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