Chair
Category
Furniture
Date
circa 1635 - circa 1645
Materials
Beech, gessoed, painted and gilded (restored), covered with silk velvet and passementerie; the top covers matching the rest of the set.
Measurements
102.0 x 53.5 x 43.0 cm
Place of origin
England
Order this imageCollection
Knole, Kent
NT 129439.5
Summary
One of a set of six beech wood chairs, English, c.1635-40, which still bear most of their original crimson velvet upholstery, adorned with gilt thread fringes and fixed with decorative round-headed gilt nails. Each chair features turned column front legs glazed in tomato red to leave a design of gilt arabesques. The inside of the frames and stretchers are painted to simulate marble. The chairs form part of a larger, extremely rare and important set of early upholstered furniture of royal provenance. It comprises a state couch – the famous ‘Knole Sofa’ that functioned as a double throne – two further couches, as well as eight stools, four high and four low. According to seventeenth-century court ceremonial, the set would have been arranged symmetrically in one room. The suite was 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 Master 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