Puritan Values

Attributed to Daniel Cottier, an Aesthetic Movement ebonised oak sideboard in the Queen Anne style, c.1880. Richly worked throughout, it combines an architectural upper stage, open lower shelf and a strong contrast between the black ebonised oak ground and warm painted decoration.

The upper section is arranged with a central painted mythological panel, flanked by angled side panels set within deep moulded frames. Above, a continuous painted and gilt strapwork border runs across the frieze; below, scrolling foliage and sunflower-like roundels sit against the dark surface. Carved bead, egg-and-dart and moulded borders frame the painted panels, giving the cupboard a dense but controlled Aesthetic surface.

The turned front columns are heavily carved with leaf and flower ornament, rising to scroll capitals and block bases, while the side panels carry pierced Gothic and Renaissance-style scrollwork. The form brings together Queen Anne Revival massing with the Aesthetic taste for ebonised surfaces, mythological subjects, painted panels and finely judged ornamental contrast.

A similar court cupboard by Cottier & Co. is illustrated in Jeremy Cooper’s Victorian and Edwardian Furniture and Interiors: From the Gothic Revival to Art Nouveau, pl.391. Further related examples include a Daniel Cottier court cupboard, c.1873, described as stained and carved oak inset with gilded and painted panels, and a Cottier ebonised and decorated cabinet, c.1880, with flower-head roundels and painted decorative panels.

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Emile Galle, an Art Nouveau walnut writing desk with exceptional inlaid scenery, c.1900.

Emile Galle, an exhibition quality Art Nouveau walnut writing desk, made c.1900. The desk is built with an upper cupboard, flanking letter racks, a lower shelf, a full-width drawer and long elegant legs joined by curved supports beneath the work surface.

The upper cupboard door is inlaid with a river scene: moored boats beneath a large tree on the river bank, worked in varied woods to create light, shadow, water and foliage. Below, the main writing surface is decorated with floral inlay and butterflies, set into a broad walnut top with rounded corners and moulded edges.

The whole piece is carried by the Art Nouveau language of organic line and natural ornament: curved supports, softened edges, botanical detail and scenic marquetry rather than applied decoration. The inlay uses an array of exotic woods, giving the desk its layered surface of grain, colour and pictorial detail.

A related example is illustrated in Alastair Duncan and Georges de Bartha, Galle Furniture, Woodbridge, 2012, p.235, plate 3. Also see Sotheby’s, Important Design, Paris, 17 December 2020, Lot 11.

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Dr Christopher Dresser, made by Art Furniture Alliance, an Egyptian Revival Aesthetic Movement low chair, c.1881–83.

Dr Christopher Dresser, made by Art Furniture Alliance, an Egyptian Revival Aesthetic Movement low chair with deeply incised and gilded decoration, c.1881–83. The chair is stamped Liberty & Co Regent St, linking it to the short-lived but important Art Furniture Alliance and its later dispersal.

The design has the compressed force of Dresser’s most radical furniture: low, severe, architectural and ornamental at once. Its Egyptian Revival language is carried through incision and gilding rather than excess, giving the chair a graphic, almost emblematic presence.

Dresser founded the Art Furniture Alliance in 1880 to supply “whatever is necessary to complete artistic furnishing of a house”, with Dresser employed as art director. Its shareholders included Harrison of Linthorpe, Chubb, Dixon and Arthur Lazenby Liberty, and the furniture was produced at Chubb’s workshops. The Alliance went into liquidation in 1883, after which Arthur Liberty most likely bought much of the stock, explaining the Liberty & Co Regent St stamp on this early AFA low chair.

An identical chair in the Birkenhead Collection is illustrated in Michael Whiteway’s Christopher Dresser 1834–1904, Harry Lyons’ The People’s Designer, and Christopher Morley’s Dresser’s Decorative Design, where it appears in a period photograph from the Chubb archive, c.1881.

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Le Bon Marché, a unique late Victorian Boudoir chair with original upholstery restored by the Royal School of Needlework.

Le Bon Marché, a unique Boudoir chair made in 1880, retaining the original Le Bon Marché stamped label under the seat. The original upholstery has been restored by the Royal School of Needlework at Hampton Court Palace.

The chair is a vivid late Victorian object: pink upholstery worked with trailing floral needlework, framed by a gathered green border with corded detailing, tasselled fringe and small castors beneath. Its low, intimate form gives it the feeling of a private interior piece, somewhere between furniture, textile work and decorative theatre.

Le Bon Marché was founded in 1838 and transformed after Aristide Boucicaut joined the founders in 1852. Through the 1870s, Boucicaut expanded the store and developed the commercial systems that made it famous: fixed prices, seasonal sales, mailed sample booklets and a delivery network reaching customers across France. The store became central to Émile Zola’s Le bonheur des dames and is regarded as the first department store in the world.

This chair sits directly within that world of late Victorian retail, upholstery choice and domestic display. Customers could select fabrics from booklets sent through the post before their furniture was made and delivered by Le Bon Marché’s horse-carried delivery network. This is likely what happened here, making the chair a unique commission work from the workshops of Le Bon Marché.

The Royal School of Needlework was founded in 1872 as the School of Art Needlework by Lady Victoria Welby. In the late Victorian period, its workshops produced major embroideries to designs by Edward Burne-Jones, William Morris and Walter Crane, placing this restoration within a much wider story of nineteenth-century needlework, ornament and artistic furnishing.

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