item details
Overview
This chair is significant as an early example of the influence of Elizabethan/Tudor design on New Zealand furniture, and because it demonstrates the use of a specific pattern from a popular British pattern book.
Main styles of Victorian furniture design
In his seminal 1833 treatise Encyclopaedia of Cottage, Farm and Villa Architecture and Furniture, influential Scottish architect John Loudon identified four main themes of contemporary furniture design in Britain: Grecian (by far the most prevalent); French or Louis XIV; Gothic; Elizabethan/Renaissance. The furniture produced in New Zealand in the mid nineteenth century can also be classified according to these themes (Cottrell 2019).
This chair very closely replicates one of the designs in Loudon’s Encyclopaedia and although it is described as a ‘gothic chair’ in the book, furniture historian William Cottrell notes that it also owes a good deal to Elizabethan/Tudor style. The design was originally conceived by architect Edward Buckton Lamb, who like many early adopters of neo-Gothic style misinterpreted true Gothic and applied ‘randomly selected and modified motif, for decorative impact rather than historical accuracy’ (Cottrell 2021).
Elizabethan style
Despite the ubiquity of chairs in New Zealand homes Te Papa has few examples from the early-mid nineteenth century, and the chairs we do have are all neo-Grecian (see PF000081, GH009107, GH009111, GH009109). Early New Zealand architecture and furnishings embraced a number of styles, however, as evidenced by an 1864 article about the public and private architecture of Nelson which notes the influence of Gothic, Italian, Greco-Egyptian, Old English, and Elizabethan styles. The application of these styles varied, and the author notes that while the Government buildings are at first glance Elizabethan, ‘the professional eye discovers that there is not a single true detail of that style.’ Still, is it ‘just the kind of building to please the public, and if they consider it beautiful, of what consequence is the different opinion of the man of taste?’ (see Nelson Examiner and New Zealand Chronicle, 28 June 1864)
Loudon’s Encyclopedia
Professional cabinet makers in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries used pattern books as a source of inspiration and a reference for customers, and they were a primary means by which London designs were disseminated throughout the English-speaking world (Heckscher and Kenny). Furniture pattern books were available in New Zealand from as early as August 1840, and therefore British designers had a strong influence on early colonial furniture (Cottrell 2016, 53).
Loudon’s Encyclopedia, with over 1000 pages and 2000 engravings, was ‘a seminal guide of domestic utility, design and architecture’ and was especially recommended by Edward Jerningham Wakefield in his 1848 Hand Book for New Zealand for the Use of Intending Colonists (Cottrell 2016, 42-3). Copies were available in Wellington from 1841, and the book was continually in print until at least 1869. We have two other pieces in the collection which are based on Loudon’s designs - two tables by Johann Levien made between 1841 and 1843. This chair is in a completely different style to those tables so demonstrates the range of patterns from Loudon’s Encyclopedia in use in New Zealand.
References
- Cottrell, William. 2016. 'Patterns and impressions: an investigation into the copying of British furniture designs, the cabinetmaker’s pattern book and trade catalogue in New Zealand 1820-1920.' PhD thesis, University of Canterbury.
- Cottrell, William. 2019. 'Beyond Te Papa: The Printed Image & A Century of Colonial-Made Furniture.' Presentation to Friends of Te Papa, 18 Sept.
- Cottrell, William. 2021. 'The Lamb/Loudon Chair.' Unpublished report provided to curator.
- Heckscher, Morrison H., and Peter M. Kenny. 2000. 'English Pattern Books in Eighteenth-Century America.' In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art.