Rams Head Antiques

Description

This is a really lovely harlequin set of four good dining chairs dating from the Arts and Crafts period circa 1890.
The chairs are in the Sussex style that was designed by Philip Webb in 1860 and manufactured by Morris and Co.
The chairs were named after a country chair found in Sussex which inspired the design with turned frame and rush seat. Similar types of chairs with faux bamboo frames and rush seats were fashionable between 1790 and 1820.
William Morris and his wife Jane used Sussex chairs in their first home Red House in Bexley Heath Kentform 1860 and subsequently in their London home Kelscott House Hammersmith. Morris’s great friend Edward Burne Jones had Sussex armchairs in his London studio as did the sculptor Alfred Gilbert. Robert Eddis recommended the chair as ‘excellent comfortable and artistic’ in his influential book ‘ Decoration and Furnishing of Town Houses 1881.
Examples from the Sussex range were supplied for students rooms at Newnham College Cambridge and for galleries in the Fitzwilliam Museum Cambridge.
The Sussex range of modest seating furniture which started with the armchair and single chair we have here expanded as a result of the commercial success of the design. Eventually it included corner chairs, children’s chairs and settles. A whole page was devoted to the Sussex range in the firms catalogue in 1912 where the armchair was priced at 9s 9d. Other firms including Liberty & Co. and Heals produced their own version of this popular design.
These chairs are in excellent condition overall, (small repair to the rush on the larger carver as photographed) with good firm joints throughout and a lovely colour to the beautifully restored oak and beechwood frames.

UK delivery can be arranged with our careful furniture courier and costs £70 plus vat to most destinations.