Carlton Hobbs LLC.

This set of four side chairs is an example of the typically “modern” inventive Viennese design of the early 19th century. They are constructed in the Biedermeier style, characteristic for its simplistic lines, minimalist design, and light-colored woods, which originated as an antidote to the pompous and ornate designs of the Empire style in France. The label “Biedermeier” comes from the name Gottlieb Biedermeier, a fictional character in the works of Ludwig Eichrodt who symbolized the German bourgeoisie, and which was applied to the period from the end of the 19th century. Figure 1: Viennese Biedermeier side chair with related splayed legs and circular seat. “Viennese furniture worked itself up into a euphoria of curves and an increasing delicacy of construction that, in the end, gave an effect of fragility. These exquisite, aristocratic objects were an inspiration to the craftsmen of the Biedermeier era: they stimulated delight in the experimental treatment of the wood and gave rise…to a quite specific blend of styles.” A wealth of variations in seating types and shapes resulted in hundreds of different designs during the this period.  In 1827, cabinetmakers registered over 900 designs with the inland-revenue office. Figure 2: Detail from Johann Christian Schoeller’s 1837 engraving The Passion for Newspapers, depicting seat furniture with circular seats and backs, and splayed legs. The present chairs are distinguished by their splayed legs, along with the combination of both circular seats and backrests. A chair in the Hofmobiliendepot, Vienna provides an example of a Biedermeier chair with similar seat and legs (figure 1). The solid round chair back, enhanced with concentric inlaid decoration, is an unusual conceit, attesting to the countless innovations in design. An engraving by Johann Christian Schoeller, entitled The Passion for Newspapers (1837), depicts a Viennese café in which the furniture, although upholstered, is markedly similar in construction, sharing the round back and seats as well as the splayed legs (figure 2).

This pair of Italian armchairs (originally form a set of 4), circa 1800, was once owned by illustrator and doll maker, Rose O’Neil (1874-1844). Born in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, O’Neil was a talented artist, becoming the first female cartoonist, most famous for creating Kewpies, cherubic figures first depicted in The Ladies Home Journal, but which grew beyond illustrations to be used for dolls, figurines, coloring books, and tableware.

With her growing fortune, Rose traveled and worked throughout the US and Europe. She frequently visited Paris, though she did not own a home there.  “Her mentor, French sculptor Auguste Rodin, had encouraged Rose to show the world her private drawings, a series entitled ‘Sweet Monsters.’ In 1921 Rose had an entire exhibition of the monster drawings at the Galerie Devambez in Paris. The following year the exhibition was shown again to an American audience at the Wildenstein Gallery in New York. Both shows met with rave reviews.” Three photographs, sent to us courtesy of the Bonniebrook Historical Society, depict the chairs in situ with Rose and guests. Rose loved antiques and was known to purchase furniture for both her home in Capri, Italy, the Villa Narcissus, and also for her estate in Connecticut, Carabas Castle.  Many items of furniture from the Villa were later transferred to her Carabas home.  When that home was sold, many items of furniture were moved to Bonniebrook, the O’Neill’s 14-room mansion in Missouri. By the 1940’s, however, Rose had lost most of her money due to the Great Depression, her extravagant nature, and from fully supporting family and friends for decades. The chairs in Canabas Castle. These chairs were purchased in Paris for one of Rose’s grand homes. Upon her permenant return to the US, she sold two of the chairs to Bertha Rockwell (an artist and aunt of the most recent owner), which were then were left to Bertha’s sister, noted architect Mary Rockwell Hook. When Rose died in 1944, the other two chairs she had kept were either left to, or acquired by, Mary Rockwell Hook to reassemble the set of four. Upon the death of Mary Rockwell Hook they were bequeathed to her neice, Jean Blackman. The chairs at Bonniebrook. The location of this last photo below was previously identified as being taken at Villa Narcissus, but as the furnishings moved from house to house, one cannot be sure.

It is purported that the set of chairs was purchased by Napoleon to be given as a birthday present to one of his sisters, who were each set up as  nobles in Italy:  Elisa became grand duchess of Tuscany, Pauline was made princess of Guastalla, and Caroline was queen of Naples. This provenance is remains unconfirmed.

This chair belongs to a group of seating furniture known as “Vierlander” chairs.

These chairs originated in Prussia in the 18th century in the province of Vierlande in northern Germany, southeast of Hamburg. The area, populated by provincial craftsmen, was agriculturally rich and these chairs are “characterized by their intricate inlay of local woods.” The chairs customarily  commemorate important family occasions, such as a birth or marriage. In the latter case, there would be a pair of such pieces, with the bride and groom each “[having] a chair made for the installation of the new house.” The family name and date of the ceremony was inlaid in marquetry, along with figural and floral decoration.

The present chair is inlaid with various flora and fauna that carry symbolic meanings. A single dove with an olive branch, as well as a pair of kissing doves, are represented to signify love and peace. There are four cornucopias symbolizing fertility and abundance, as well as acorns, which, as the seed of the oak, denotes growth and potential in addition to fertility and life. In his 1892 volume  The Boy Travellers in Norther Europe, Thomas Wallace Knox illustrates a scene in which Vierlander chairs are described:

In the lower rooms of the house we saw several chairs bearing names and dates, and I asked Mrs. B what they were. “I ought to have told you, my dear,’ said she,’ that it is the custom in Vierlande, whenever a wedding takes place, for the bride and bridegroom to have chairs made, one for each, bearing their names and the date of the wedding. The chairs are of the same pattern, as you see in this pair, but the bride’s chair is made a little lower than that of the bridegroom, to indicate that the husband is the superior and the wife sits below him.’ “I looked at the pair of chairs we were considering and also at several other pairs, and found that what she said was correct. In every instance the bride’s chair was about an inch lower than the other, and it was also more delicately made. I wonder if this is intended to show that the bride is more refined in nature than the strong-limbed and coarse-looking husband, such as Vierlande husbands are?”

Something to ponder when you next sit down…

Highly unusual lyre-back armchair. English, circa 1795. Carlton Hobbs LLC.

The use of the form of the ancient lyre in the square back of a chair was an innovation of the first phase of post-Rococo Neo-Classicism in the second part of the Eighteenth Century.  The lyre itself was derived from depictions of the instrument in Greek and Roman vases; these vases were central to the revival of interest in the antique that exercised a profound influence on the development of the decorative arts in the period. Apollo Cup, circa 480-470 BCE; Delphi Museum, Greece.

The form of these vases and the scenes they depict began to exercise a great hold on the imagination of the age through the propagation of works such as Pierre François d’Hancarville’s four volume Catalogue of the Collection of Etruscan, Greek and Roman antiquities from the cabinet of the Hon. William Hamilton, published between 1767 and 1776. Robert Adam made use of the lyre form in chairs of the 1770’s, as did designers such as John Linnell who worked under his influence.  Visiting Adam’s Osterley in 1773, Horace Walpole observed: “The chairs are taken from antique lyres and make a charming harmony.” A chair from Osterley, designed by Adam and today in the collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum, is an example of his use of the lyre splat; conceived in a highly stylised mode of scrolling decoration and lapping acanthus leaves.  A second chair from the V&A, also designed for Osterley, probably by John Linnell, illustrates the way that the form of the lyre became highly stylised in some of the furniture of the 1770’s. Matching lyre-back side chair. English, circa 1795. Carlton Hobbs LLC.

In the present set of chairs, however, the lyre takes a highly unusual naturalistic form, with knots in the curving arms and carved undulations in the wood. The striking effect is accentuated by the simplicity of the overall form of the chair; the back itself is filled only by the form of the lyre, in contrast with the more exuberant stylization of the chairs from earlier in the century.  They are related to a similar pair of English painted armchairs sold by Christie’s London, 21 April 1994 (below). Pair of Late George III lyre-back armchairs. Sole by Christie's London, 21 April 1994.

In Regency Redux by Emily Evans Eerdmans (New York, 2008) various 20th century interpretations of the Regency style, from “the Napoleonic to the Classical Moderne to the present, are explored.”1 Clean lines combined with the flair of French Empire style resulted in glamorous and luxurious interiors in the homes of the Hollywood haut monde, achieved by pairing contemporary and antique design elements.

From the 16th century onward, grottoes were constructed as fanciful retreats from reality. They appeared throughout Europe, from the Buontalenti Grotto at Palazzo Pitti in Florence, to the Grotto of Thetis at Versailles (torn down in 1684), to the Kuskovo Grotto near Moscow. These fantasy structures were “adorned with interesting rock formations, fountains, seashells, and often, matching furniture.”1

English. Circa 1825. Of stained deal and painted iron. The iron top rail surmounted by a row of stylised foliate cusps, the seat flanked by the uprights in the form of clustered columns, the pierced tracery back, the shaped seat above the rail carved with a band of quatrefoil decoration, the whole raised on four legs, each leg in the form of a cluster column raised on an octagonal plinth foot.

Probably Brazilian. Circa 1755. Of jacaranda. Each with a shaped pierced back surmounted by a carved rocaille scroll above a shaped splat, the original embossed leather seat depicting a cupid, the seat above the shaped and carved apron, the whole raised on four legs, the front pair of cabriole form terminating in hooved feet, the outswept rear legs, the legs united by a shaped stretcher.

French In The English Manner. Circa 1810. Of mahogany and gilt brass. Each of tub-back form, the shaped top rail carved with two rosettes, the upholstered back flanked by two downswept arms, each terminating in a scroll centred by a rosette, the seat resting above a frieze panelled to the front and flanked with two carved rosettes, the whole raised on four sabre legs, the front pair panelled, each leg terminating in a gilt brass lotus leaf foot raised on a castor.

Venice. Signed with Initials T e H R and Dated 1711. The present chairs are bold and over-scale examples of the exuberantly carved and vividly coloured chairs being created in the early part of the eighteenth century to furnish the enchantingly sensuous palazzos of Venice, then "an enchanted city of carnivals, masques, amusement and pretence." The presence to the reverse of the chairs of a date and signature is extremely rare on an early eighteenth century piece of Italian furniture and dates them precisely to 1711. The chairs are an example of the modified form in which the high-backed chair of the renaissance persisted into the eighteenth century, ranged with cabinets and tables against the walls of the grand formal rooms of Italian palazzos. The unusual survival of a design for a chair in the Fondazione Fantoni, Rovetta, illustrates the elaborate form that such chairs attained in Italy.

English. Circa 1755. Of mahogany, each with arched back filled with tubular bars. The well drawn outswept arms raised on profoundly incurved supports. The dished solid mahogany seat above four square legs, the front slightly curved and with shaped ears, all united by bar stretchers and raised on four original leather wheeled brass castors.

In Regency Redux by Emily Evans Eerdmans (New York, 2008) various 20th century interpretations of the Regency style, from “the Napoleonic to the Classical Moderne to the present, are explored.”1 Clean lines combined with the flair of French Empire style resulted in glamorous and luxurious interiors in the homes of the Hollywood haut monde, achieved by pairing contemporary and antique design elements.

Interestingly, in the book there appears a chair very similar to a fine pair of carved silver-gilt Rococo single chairs, probably from Genoa circa 1760, in our collection (left). The chair can be seen in situ in a photo of a fashionable “Hollywood Regency” interior designed by Jack Woolf for fellow decorator James Pendleton’s home (right).
We’re excited by this find and continue to investigate the provenance of our chairs and any connection they have to the homes of Hollywood.

1 Eerdmans, Emily Evans. Regency Redux. New York: Rizzoli, 2008.

George Bullock (d. 1819) made his name as a highly important contributor to Regency design as a cabinetmaker. His career was short, and for a period, unrecognized, but in that brief time he executed highly original works and won commissions from esteemed persons of the day, and notably, Napoleon's final home at New Longwood on St. Helena, contracted by the British government. Over the course of his career Bullock received several major commissions: those of New Longwood, Cholmondely Castle, Abbotsford for Sir Walter Scott, and Great Tew Park for industrialist Matthew Robinson Boulton.