Couch Chair
Category
Furniture
Date
circa 1635 - circa 1645
Materials
Beech, gessoed, painted, and gilded, covered with silk velvet and passementerie
Measurements
103.0 x 101.6 x 52.0 cm
Place of origin
England
Order this imageCollection
Knole, Kent
NT 129438.1
Summary
One of a pair of beech sofas or couch chairs (also known as settees), England, c.1635-40, each with fixed side screens in segmented form and the front legs with gilt ball feet. Upholstered in crimson velvet, the squabs (or cushions) are embroidered in silver with scrolls and panels of emblematical subjects. The backs are divided into panels by crimson and gold thread fringes. The wooden frameworks are glazed in tomato red to leave a design of gilt arabesques, while the inside of the frames and stretchers are painted to simulate marble (the painted decoration was restored in 1969 by the Rural Industries Bureau). The two couches form part of a larger suite, which comprise yet another couch – the famous ‘Knole Sofa’ – six chairs, and eight stools, four high and four low. All three Knole couch chairs were at the cutting edge of furniture and design at the time. The couches were previously thought to date from c.1625 and the frame decoration was then associated with John de Critz, Sargent Painter to King James I. from 1605.
Provenance
Probably acquired as a royal perquisite by Charles Sackville, 6th Earl of Dorset or his maternal grandfather Lionel Cranfield, 1st Earl of Middlesex, in their capacities of Lord Chamberlain and Masters of the Great Wardrobe. First recorded at Knole in 1706. Knole and the majority of its furniture were accepted by HM Treasury in part payment of death duties and transferred to the National Trust in 1946.
References
Symonds 1945: R. W. Symonds, 'The Upholstered Furniture at Knole I', Burlington Magazine LXXXVI (May 1945): 110-15 Rowell 2006: Christopher Rowell, 'A Set of Early Seventeenth-Century Crimson Velvet Seat Furniture at Knole: New Light on the "Knole Sofa"', Furniture History XLII (2006): 27-52