A SET OF EIGHT VICTORIAN WALNUT AND LEATHER CHAIRS

A.Blain & Son is the continuation of the business started by A.Blain. By the 1840's they were a well known furnishing and upholstery firm who are known to have carried out work for the shipbuilders Cammell Laird. The dining-chairs with grecian-scrolled and pillared backs, are designed in the Victorian French/antique fashion popularised by the Manchester designer Richard Charles, The Cabinet-Maker's Books of Designs, 1866. They bear the D cypher of the ancient Dobell family of Streat and Folkington, Sussex, beneath their family crest on a mount,vert, a hart, lodged between four bullrushes.