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Estonian chair, c.1850-60
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Estonian chair, XF122, c.1850-60, beech. ©Sir John Soane's Museum, London. Photograph: Hugh Kelly.
Estonian chair, c.1850-60
Beech with later plywood seat
Museum number: XF122
Not on display
Curatorial note
Originally caned but now supplied with a later shield-shaped stamped plywood seat marked on the underside FABRIQUE EN ESTONIA / LUTERMA / MADE IN ESTONIA. The front rail is stamped G and the back rail D. It is of a somewhat idiosyncratic design with fluted splats between the top rail and the cross bar, square tapering front legs and sabre back legs and has often been thought to be of the Soane period but its design aesthetic seems at odds with that of Soane and it does not appear in the Furniture and Fittings inventory of 1837. Simon Jervis, after a detailed examination, is convinced that it is of the late nineteenth century. There are a number of chairs which seem to have been acquired for curatorial use or perhaps for the use of warders’ in the late nineteenth century. It was in the Curator’s Sitting Room in c.1911, as seen in a photograph of that date.
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