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Armchair

Ref: 1795
  • Designer / Maker

    Designed by Arthur Heygate Mackmurdo (1851-1942)

    Manufactured by E. Goodhall & Co. (fl. circa 1850-1899), for The Century Guild of Artists (founded 1882)

    Upholstery fabric designed by Herbert Horne (1864-1916), manufactured by Simpson and Godlee

  • Detail

    Satinwood, with brass castors, and cotton upholstery

    78.7 x 59.7 x 49.5 cm

    English (Manchester), circa 1890

  • Provenance

    Henry (1849-1925) and Ruth Boddington, Pownall Hall; […]; with Paul Reeves, 2013; private collection, USA

  • Literature

    T. Raffles Davison, ‘A Modern Country Home’, The Art Journal, New Series, London: J.S. Virtue, 1891, pp. 329-335

    Stuart Evans and Jean Liddiard, Arts and Crafts Pioneers: The Hobby Horse Men and their Century Guild, London: Lund Humphries, 2021, pp. 110-121

  • Notes

    This remarkable armchair, the pair to which is in the collection of the Art Institute of Chicago (2014.5), is covered with the original and iconic Praise of the Soul fabric, designed by Herbert Horne.  The Pownall Hall chairs are petite in scale, with echoes of the rococo period in their design, as well as elements that would become increasingly familiar in the nascent Art Nouveau style.  The chairs were created for the drawing room, conceived as a feminine space (see image below).

    Horne’s cotton fabric, with its trumpeters against a swirling background, was designed in circa 1884. Perhaps more than the chairs themselves, Praise of the Soul resembles directly Art Nouveau design.  The fabric was carefully conserved in 2013, and a full condition report is available on request.

    Davison describes the Pownall Hall drawing room as ‘a unique and pretty apartment, the prevailing colour being tones of yellow.  It is chiefly in this and the delicacy of detail that the value lies, for [he criticizes] there is a formality and stiffness in the Century Guild work here, which suggest neither luxuriousness nor ease.’  The fabric on the chairs has clearly faded as Davison notes: ‘Below the frieze is a citron-toned fabric, on which are angels blowing trumpets…’ (loc. cit., p. 334, and see below).