A RARE JAPANNED AND POLYCHROME DECORATED BEECH LOW CHAIR ATTRIBUTED TO WILLIAM BURGES, CIRCA 1870-1880

See a similar chair by Burges illustrated in The Building News, 17 April 1874, which is reproduced by Jeremy Cooper, Victorian Edwardian Furniture & Interiors, Thames and Hudson, 1987, p.69, fig.141.

For further comparison see the seat furniture in Lady Bute's Bedroom at Castell Coch, Tongwynlais in South Wales, a commission from the late 1860s from one of Burges greatest clients and a chair photographed circa 1885 in the Drawing Room of Burges' own home, Tower House, Holland Park, London.

William Burgess (1827-1881) is often rightly described as an artistic visionary but his background and training was more conventional with his family wealth allowing him to fully explore his potential as a designer. He trained initially as an engineer before, in 1849, becoming articled as an architect in the office of Edward Blore and then Matthew Digby Wyatt where he perfected his skills as a draughtsman, producing drawings of Medieval metalwork for Wyatt's book Metalwork published in 1852.

From a young age he was passionate about historic styles. At 14 years old Burges was given A. W. Pugin's, Contrasts (1836), a text which argued for the revival of the medieval Gothic style. The publication of important books of the period, such as Henry Shaw's Specimens of Ancient Furniture (also 1836) and M. Viollet-Le-Duc's Dictionnaire Rasionné du Mobilier Francais of 1858 must have been inspiring source material for him.

In 1851 he joined Henry Clutton, later becoming his partner. Together they won the competition to design the new cathedral at Lille, although this was never carried out; his first important ecclesiastical design to be realised was St Finbar's Cathedral, Cork, which he began in 1862. Also in that year, with William Slater, he devised the Medieval Court for the International Exhibition in London. From 1866 he altered and extended Cardiff Castle, the first commission for the Marquess and Marchioness of Bute before going onto to work on Castell Coch between 1872 and 1881 for them.

The present chair is an incredible stylistic fusion of much which appealed to Burges. The skill of the craftsman is celebrated through decorative techniques including the 'japanned' surface and polychrome woven seat. There are influences drawn from all sorts of sources. We see a reference to British vernacular and ancient furniture through similarities with boldly turned 'turners chairs', the flamboyance of Medieval French decorative painting and perhaps even North African 'Moorish' forms. There is joy in this playfulness of design, Burges himself said, 'There are some people who... consider medieval art to be eminently ecclesiastical, and profoundly serious to be approached with caution, forgetting that mankind has been very much the same in every age, and that our ancestors joked and laughed as much as we do'.