H. Blairman & Sons Ltd

Designed by Henry William Batley (1846-1932)

Manufactured by Collinson & Lock (firm active 1870-97)

Rosewood, with velvet upholstery (of later date)

86.3 x 40.6 x 40.6 cm

English (London), circa 1876

‘7750 COLLINSON & LOCK LONDON’ under front seat rail (see right)

Philadelphia Centennial, 1876 (a chair of this pattern)

‘NEW PATTERN CHAIR (DESIGNED BY MR. H.W. BATLEY’The House Decorator and School of Design, III, (22 July 1881), p. 24

‘Some New Furniture’, The British Architect, November 1883

Susan Weber Soros, ‘Rediscovering H.W. Batley (1846-1932), British Aesthetic Movement Artist and  Designer, Studies in the Decorative Arts, VI, no. 2  (Spring-Summer 1999), fig. 14

H. Blairman & Sons, Furniture and Works of Art (2001), no. 16 (for a pair of this pattern)

Private collection

The present model may originally have been designed for the Philadelphia Centennial, 1876, where it can be seen in a photograph of the Collinson & Lock stand (Free Library, Philadelphia).

Several chairs of this pattern are recorded, including two in public collections: one, formerly with Blairman, is now at the MFA, Boston (see In Pursuit of Beauty, New York, 1986, fig. 5.5), and another is at the Musée d’Orsay, Paris (see Revue du Louvre, 3, (June 1993), p. 83, no. 25).