Chair
Dining chair
Side chair
Maker & role
Unknown, Maker
Production date
circa 1845
Object detail
Production place
Collection
Measurements
1:6, H: 88 x W: 49 x D: 44cm (H: 880 x W: 490 x D: 440mm)
Production notes
Probably made in Sydney.
Signature & marks
Various crude chisel marks on seat rails numbering the different chairs in the set in Roman numerals. These numbers probably corresponded with numbers on the drop-in seats, now upholstered over. The numeral 'IX' suggests that the chairs were probably originally part of a set of twelve.
Credit line
Purchase, 1996
Vaucluse House Collection, Museums of History New South Wales
Vaucluse House Collection, Museums of History New South Wales
Description
Set of six drawing or dining room side chairs in Australian red cedar (Toona ciliata) with upholstered drop-in seats now covered in black horsehair fabric. The chairs, in Louis Revival taste, are characterised by a curvaceous 'saddle' or kidney-shaped top rail and a bowed back rail with carved inverted scrolls. The back legs (continuous with the top rail) are of sabre form (i.e. outswept) and sweep together to terminate beneath the scrolls of the back rail. The seat tapers from the front to the back of the chair. The turned front legs feature a 'frieze' of upstanding vestigial acanthus leaves between upper and lower beads above baluster shapes with elongated 'centurion's skirt' carving.
Museums of History NSW interprets the interiors of Vaucluse House according to the evidence available for their occupancy by William Charles and Sarah Wentworth and their family between 1827-1853 and 1861-62. The design of these 'saddleback' sidechairs is based on a design published by John Claudius Loudon in his Encyclopaedia of Cottage Farm and Villa Architecture and Furniture that appeared in numerous editions between 1833 and 1869. The chair is illustrated as plate 1936 in the 1839 edition. Loudon's Encyclopaedia was highly influential on domestic design in colonial New South Wales, with copies held by the Australian Subscription library and architects such as Mortimer Lewis, who is believed to have been involved with extensions to Vaucluse House in the late 1830s to c. 1847. The design of these chairs is broadly in sympathy with Louis Revival details of the Vaucluse House drawing room, particularly the chimneypiece and division of the walls into panels by means of wallpaper borders. A set of Wentworth-provenanced baloon-back chairs is in the Vaucluse House collection (exhibited in the Second room) but not the slightly earlier saddle-back form of chair. It was pleasing to find a comparitively large set of side chairs in cedar (not a durable timber for chairs). Saddleback chairs and Louis Revival furniture is generally spurned by collectors of Australiana and the acquisition of the chairs allowed a predominant mid-19th taste to be represented in a public collection.
Museums of History NSW interprets the interiors of Vaucluse House according to the evidence available for their occupancy by William Charles and Sarah Wentworth and their family between 1827-1853 and 1861-62. The design of these 'saddleback' sidechairs is based on a design published by John Claudius Loudon in his Encyclopaedia of Cottage Farm and Villa Architecture and Furniture that appeared in numerous editions between 1833 and 1869. The chair is illustrated as plate 1936 in the 1839 edition. Loudon's Encyclopaedia was highly influential on domestic design in colonial New South Wales, with copies held by the Australian Subscription library and architects such as Mortimer Lewis, who is believed to have been involved with extensions to Vaucluse House in the late 1830s to c. 1847. The design of these chairs is broadly in sympathy with Louis Revival details of the Vaucluse House drawing room, particularly the chimneypiece and division of the walls into panels by means of wallpaper borders. A set of Wentworth-provenanced baloon-back chairs is in the Vaucluse House collection (exhibited in the Second room) but not the slightly earlier saddle-back form of chair. It was pleasing to find a comparitively large set of side chairs in cedar (not a durable timber for chairs). Saddleback chairs and Louis Revival furniture is generally spurned by collectors of Australiana and the acquisition of the chairs allowed a predominant mid-19th taste to be represented in a public collection.
Accession number
V2007/1-1:6
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