Lot Essay
Reginald Blomfield joined Lethaby, Sidney Barnsley, Gimson, and Mervyn McCartney as founders of Kenton and Co. in 1890.
A settee to the same design as the present piece was exhibited at the Kenton and Co. Exhibition, Barnards Inn, London in 1891, (see contemporary photograph here reproduced), where it was commended in The Builder as being 'of noble proportions and fine in its sweeping curves', although criticised for its high price (£50.0.0).
The settee was exhibited again in the Arts and Crafts Exhibition 1893, and later, in the Anglo-French Exhibition, Paris, in 1910. The settee was made in solid rosewood by J.Urand in the Kenton and Co. workshops. Blomfield himself created clay models of the scrolled arms in order to demonstrate their intricacy to the cabinet maker.
This settee will be discussed in a forthcoming article about Kenton & Co. by Frances Collard of the Victoria & Albert Museum, to be published in the Journal of the Decorative Arts Society, No.20, 1996.
A settee to the same design as the present piece was exhibited at the Kenton and Co. Exhibition, Barnards Inn, London in 1891, (see contemporary photograph here reproduced), where it was commended in The Builder as being 'of noble proportions and fine in its sweeping curves', although criticised for its high price (£50.0.0).
The settee was exhibited again in the Arts and Crafts Exhibition 1893, and later, in the Anglo-French Exhibition, Paris, in 1910. The settee was made in solid rosewood by J.Urand in the Kenton and Co. workshops. Blomfield himself created clay models of the scrolled arms in order to demonstrate their intricacy to the cabinet maker.
This settee will be discussed in a forthcoming article about Kenton & Co. by Frances Collard of the Victoria & Albert Museum, to be published in the Journal of the Decorative Arts Society, No.20, 1996.