Holt Antiques at Walsingham Mill
16th Century English Gothic Antique Elm Boarded Stool, with Witch Mark / Apotropaic Mark
16th Century English Gothic Antique Elm Boarded Stool, with Witch Mark / Apotropaic Mark
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A very rare and important English boarded stool in elm, dating to the mid-16th century and surviving in remarkably original state. Of primitive boarded construction — predating the mortise-and-tenon joined stool — the piece is raised on solid side boards carved with Gothic crockets, the foliate tips of which pierce through the side rails in an unusual and architecturally ambitious manner that betrays the hand of a maker steeped in the late Gothic idiom. The crocket, properly a feature of ecclesiastical stonework adorning spires, pinnacles and gables, here migrates onto vernacular furniture at the very moment the Gothic was yielding to the Renaissance, lending the stool considerable art-historical interest.
The underside retains a wonderful dry, untouched surface incised with interlocking daisy-wheel witch marks — compass-drawn hexafoils of the apotropaic tradition, scored into the timber to repel malevolent forces and protect the household. Such ritual-protection marks, more familiar from the timbers of Tudor buildings, are seldom encountered on a piece of furniture of this date and are entirely in keeping with the folk belief of the period.
Provenance: England. 16th Century.
Material: Elm.
Condition: Honestly described: the stool appears to have been re-nailed at some stage in its long life, and one side rail looks to have been historically altered or replaced to accommodate the natural warping of the seat board. These sympathetic interventions are themselves part of the object's working biography and in no way detract from a survival of genuine rarity. All else presents as original.
Dimensions: 17½ in high × 26½ in wide × 11 in deep (44.5 cm × 67.5 cm × 28 cm)
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