A SET OF FOUR INDIAN CARVED EBONY SIDE CHAIRS

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CARVED EBONY CHAIRS Carved ebony chairs were made throughout South East Asia during the second half of the 17th century, particularly along the Coromandel Coast of India and in Batavia (Indonesia) or Ceylon. These ebony chairs were conceived at the end of the 17th century, when a new style of ebony furniture became fashionable in the Dutch colonies, between circa 1680 and 1720. The main difference from the previous era is the decoration of large sculpturally carved flowers, which is called "half-relief". This distinction was already made at the time, as we see from the inventory of Cornelia Linis, the widow of the clergyman Johannes Vermeer, dated 1690, which mentions, in the front room, "twelve high kaliatur chairs with large flowers". This new type of floral decoration was developed around 1680, probably on the Coromandel Coast, and was rapidly introduced in the other Dutch overseas territories. An important factor was, of course, the import of such items of furniture by transferred employees of the United (Dutch) East India Company. Another would have been the influx of slaves from from India to Indonesia shortly after 1680, amongst whom were probably a large number of cabinet-makers. Additionally, both the transport of gravestones with similar floral borders, which were used as ballast on United (Dutch) East India Company ships, and samples of Indian textiles also contributed to the spread of this new decoration. (J. Veenendaal, Furniture from Indonesia, Sri Lanka and India, Delft 1985, pp. 47-55). Dutch colonial chairs were considered entirely appropriate for the decoration of Romantic antiquarian interiors in England during the second half of the 18th century and most of the 19th century, as they were thought to be Tudor. This tradition was compounded by Horace Walpole at the time he was furnishing his Gothic mansion, Strawberry Hill in Middlesex. Having seen a pair of ebony chairs in Esher Place, Surrey, where Cardinal Wolsey had lived from 1519, he immediately, but wrongly, associated them with Wolsey, reinforcing a tradition which survived for many years (C. Wainwright, "Only the True Black Blood", Furniture History Society Journal', XXI, 1985, pp 250-254). Walpole himself acquired several chairs related to the present examples, including, in 1763, eighteen chairs and two tables of solid ebony from Stoughton House, Huntingdonshire, seat of the Conyers family, which he placed in the Holbein Chamber at Strawberry Hill. Several chairs of this type also furnished St. Michael's Gallery at Fonthill Abbey - William Beckford's supreme folly. Further examples were in the collection of the Dukes of Hamilton and were included in the sale of the contents of Hamilton Palace in 1882. This model of chair was also used in a design by Pugin in 1834 in which he chose a group of Tudor pieces as the subject for an engraving, entitled "Ancient Furniture". An extremely similar pair is illustrated in Amin Jaffer, Furniture from British India and Ceylon, 2001, pl. 64. Two further chairs in the collection of Her Majesty the Queen are illustrated in Hugh Roberts, For the King's Pleasure, The Furnishing and Decoration of George IV's Apartments at Windsor Castle, 2001, figs. 324 and 325, p. 260.

A SET OF FOUR INDIAN CARVED EBONY SIDE CHAIRS

CIRCA 1660-80, COROMANDEL COAST

Details

A SET OF FOUR INDIAN CARVED EBONY SIDE CHAIRS
CIRCA 1660-80, COROMANDEL COAST
Each carved overall with scrolling foliage, the pierced arched toprail centred by a winged maiden's mask issuing fantastical birds, the splat with spirally-turned uprights between square stiles surmounted by birds with ivory eyes, above a drop-in caned seat, on spirally-turned legs and stretchers, three with elongated pear-shaped feet, the fourth with ball feet, one with probably 18th century handwritten label "Mrs Orlebar, Hinwick House, Beds", recaned seats (4)

Provenance

By repute, Queen Catherine of Braganza.
The Orlebar family, Hinwick House, Bedfordshire.

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Lot Essay

QUEEN CATHERINE OF BRAGANZA
Interesting the Hinwick Guidebook states that the "five chairs of ebony inlaid with ivory" were part of the dowry of Queen Catherine of Braganza. When Catherine of Braganza came from Portugal as bride of Charles II (whom she married by proxy in 1662), she brought Indian furniture inlaid with ivory trees, birds and flowers such as had never been seen in London.

THE ORLEBARS
These chairs were almost certainly supplied to Hinwick House, Bedfordshire, upon its completion in 1713. The land was acquired by the Orlebar family in the 1640s through the marriage of Richard Orlebar to Margaret Child. However, the house was only built by his great-grandson III Orlebar between 1709 and 1713, a year after marrying the daughter and co-heiress of Sir Samuel Astry.
Two of these chairs is illustrated in situ at the foot of the main staircase (see "Hinwick House", Official Guide").

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