Window seat
Category
Furniture
Date
circa 1815 - 1825
Materials
Brown oak, beech, lacquered brass, jacquard, hessian, webbing
Measurements
53 x 138 x 33.5 cm
Place of origin
England
Order this imageCollection
Erddig, Wrexham
NT 1147074.2
Summary
A brown-oak window seat, English, circa 1815-25, one of a pair. The frame reeded, and with up-scrolled ends faced as concentric circles. Raised on four rectangular-section sabre legs, headed by line-carved tablets or blocks, and fitted with gilt brass paw-cast caps and castors. The squab cushion upholstered in later jacquard brocade printed with gold poppies and leaves against a crimson ground.
Full description
Part of a small collection of pieces of pollard oak furniture at Erddig, one of which (a breakfast table NT 1146943) is labelled for Podmore & Powells, a firm of upholsters and cabinet-makers based in nearby Chester, who were briefly in partnership between 1827 and 1829. In October 1829, the partnership was dissolved and the firm's assets were disposed at an auction on 16 October. Pollard oak was in vogue in the 1820s, and is sometimes called 'brown oak'. Now dispersed about the house, the collection of George IV pollard oak and brown oak furniture at Erddig was possibly purchased to furnish a particular room by Simon Yorke II (1771-1834) and his wife Margaret (1778-1848) in the 1820s.
Provenance
Apparent in a watercolour of the Saloon painted in 1849. Given by Philip Yorke III (1905-1978) along with the estate, house and contents to the National Trust in 1973.