Chair
Category
Furniture
Date
1640 - 1660
Materials
Ebony, Leather, Rush
Measurements
845 x 540 mm
Place of origin
Coromandel Coast
Order this imageCollection
Cotehele, Cornwall
NT 347750
Summary
A set of seven ebony chairs elaborately carved in low relief with interlaced scrolls and floral patterns, and rope work spindles to the backs. The supports and stretchers carved in the form of spiral rope work. The seats with nailed hide coverings. Amin Jaffer wrote about this type of chair in in 'Furniture from British India and Ceylon: A Catalogue of the Collections in the Victoria and Albert Museum and the Peabody Essex Museum' (Massachusetts: Peabody Essex Museum, 2001), dating this type 1640-60. They originate from the Coromandel Coast of India. Chairs of a similar type became popular in the mid-18th century because Horace Walpole believed (and publicised) that they were English (Elizabethan) thus starting a collecting fad amongst many of his contemporaries.