Armchair
Category
Furniture
Date
1640 - 1660
Materials
Ebony, Horsehair, Horse-hair
Measurements
1050 x 600 mm
Place of origin
Coromandel Coast
Order this imageCollection
Cotehele, Cornwall
NT 347751
Summary
An ebony arm chair of similar design to COT.F.71 and 72, but having barley twist supports and stretchers and finials on the back uprights in the form of birds. Also drop in horse hair seat. 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 1660-80. 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.