LATE 19TH CENTURY, POSSIBLY BY BIRCH & CO

This exuberantly designed chair was intended as a highly decorative virtuoso expression of the chair turners' art, with a clear sense of humour in its conception. The use of decorative turnings in this and other related chairs has often been attributed to the firm of William Birch and Co who worked throughout the 19th Century and into the 20th Century in High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire, as chair manufacturers. They, like other firms,imported American Birch to make many of their chairs and stained them with Venetian Red to simulate Mahogany. In a similar way, the use of the segmented Birch seat, as in this example, was a practice which the HIgh Wycombe manufacturers adopted from Swedish chairs and utilised in a number of their designs. This example is unusually decorative and it may have been as an individual order or as an exhibition piece. Dr. B.Cotton October 2005