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A George III Period English Antique Mendlesham Armchair, Suffolk, Circa 1790–1810
A George III Period English Antique Mendlesham Armchair, Suffolk, Circa 1790–1810
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A handsome George III Mendlesham armchair, that most distinctive of East Anglian Windsor chairs, made in the village of Mendlesham in mid-Suffolk and attributed to the workshop of the Day family.
A BRIEF HISTORY OF MENDLESHAM CHAIRS
The Mendlesham chair is one of the most distinctive of all English regional Windsors, and the only one to take its name from its village of origin — Mendlesham, in mid-Suffolk. The traditional Mendlesham chair was made there by the Day family, active from the end of the eighteenth century until the 1830s: Daniel Day, a wheelwright of Mendlesham and Stonham, and his son Richard, born in the village in 1785. One, and possibly two, of the Day sons are reputed to have trained in London under Thomas Sheraton before returning to the family workshop, and it is to this moment that the appearance of the first Mendlesham chairs is traditionally dated.
What makes the type so singular is the marriage of two very different traditions. A sophisticated, almost Sheraton-style back — often strikingly elongated — is grafted onto a Windsor seat, giving a chair that is at once vernacular and genteel. Alone among Windsors, Mendlesham chairs have a rectangular back unlike any other, the defining feature being a twin cross-rail separated by a row of three small turned bobbins or balls. The better examples carry one or two lines of boxwood stringing to the back rails and splat, a refined inlaid detail borrowed directly from cabinet work — indeed the Mendlesham is the only Windsor to employ cabinetmaker's joints in its construction. The timbers follow Windsor practice: a shaped elm seat with fruitwood arms, legs and spindles, frequently with yew used alongside.
A collector's caveat worth knowing: Day did not sign his work, and no marked example is known, so every Mendlesham chair is necessarily an attribution on stylistic grounds rather than a documented piece.
ABOUT THIS CHAIR
The chair displays the unmistakable Mendlesham form, with its square, Sheraton-influenced back of cabinet-made construction surmounting a traditional Windsor seat. The slightly bowed top rail is set above a row of three turned balls, over a panel of slender spindles flanking a pierced and waisted central splat of interlaced openwork design, with a further pair of turned balls above the arched cross-rail below — the whole enlivened throughout with scratch-carved stringing, a characteristic of these chairs. The shaped saddle seat of elm retains a wonderful figure and colour, with downswept arms on raked supports and turned, splayed legs united by a bulbous turned central stretcher.
A genuine and instantly recognisable example of the only English Windsor chair to be named after its village of origin — a thoroughly engaging piece of Suffolk vernacular cabinetmaking in the Sheraton taste, with all the warmth and honest wear one hopes to find.
Provenance: England, circa 1790-1810.
Material: Indigenous mixed-timbers.
Condition: Good honest country condition, with excellent colour and patina. There is some historic worm (treated and inactive) to the lower back rail, early, honest repairs to both arm supports where they meet the seatboard, and a pair of old iron repair plates to the underside of the seat reinforcing the seat-to-back joint, as is commonly found on chairs of this form and age. Structurally sound and entirely useable, with minor wear, marks and movement commensurate with age and generations of use.
Dimensions: 33in high x 23¼in wide x 15¼in deep (84cm x 59cm x 39cm)
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