Doe and Hope

Description

The beautifully proportioned gilt show-framed enclosed armchair in the unmistakable French style and having the original Regency inspired duck-egg blue silk upholstery with padded arm-rests and taffeta piping, the painted and parcel gilt beech frame with carved rose heads and leaves, gadrooned top rail and frieze with fluted and turned legs having carved floral motifs and terminating in lobed ball finials survives from late nineteenth century France.

In what we like to describe as ‘country house condition’, the chair is completely original and has not been tampered with at all. The silk is dirty in places, especially to the areas one would expect, i.e. where one’s head and arms would rest but crucially there are no tears present and the piping is all in tact, though slightly loose in places. The frame is in good order having knocks and wear commensurate with age, with one or two very small areas of loss. One could reupholster but we feel this would detract from the chairs charm, perhaps it would be better to sympathetically clean the silk in situ.

The original purpose of the flared wings or enclosures in armchairs were understood to be to prevent drafts in old houses from reaching ones upper body or to protect the delicate skin of gentrified ladies from the heat of a roaring fire. This salon, or parlour chair is a more elegant version of, say, a more bulky mahogany Georgian wingback chair but with the same idea in mind.

A chair that is wonderfully evocative of its life thus far.