FP 39
Walnut stool
Date: Edward VII c. 1905
Date Purchased: 1914 for £5.0.0
The rectangular shaped seat frame has cross-grain moulded edge retaining an upholstered drop-in seat, over baluster turnings to square cut cabriole legs with pronounced knees and a beaded outline, above a small, moulded half collar, to a reverse curve, terminating in scroll feet. The four legs are united by small section, moulded cross stretchers of broken serpentine form. The design of this stool belongs to the early eighteenth century.. This method of retaining a drop-in seat seems to appear on chairs circa 1700 and could be the earliest form of this style of upholstery. A single chair in the Victoria and Albert Museum Collection (WW37-1916) appears to retain its drop-in seat in the same manner. Cross stretchers are recorded in the accounts of the Royal Household from the 1690s and remain fashionable until 1710. The form and detail of the cabriole leg appears on a table in the Victoria and Albert Museum's Collection (WW101-1937). However, the incorrect construction of the seat frame and the construction of the cross grain retaining mould formed using solid pieces of walnut glued directly to the edge of the seat rail frame is not the technique found in walnut construction of the period to which the style of this stool belongs.
The over finishing of the legs has a nineteenth century feel and the colour and polishing seem to be an attempt to produce an effect of age and patination. On balance it would seem this stool dates from the early twentieth century. The stool was therefore purchased by Frederick Parker as a genuine late seventeenth century piece, but it is clear it was made to deceive. This makes the stool an interesting twentieth century fake, and very much reflects a practice that antiques dealers of the time indulged, much of which is revealed and recorded in Herbert Cescinsky's The Gentle Art of Faking. (Cescinsky, Herbert, Gentle Art of Faking, 1931). A stool of the same model was sold at Christie's, King Street, London on 9th March, 2000, lot 14.
Measurements: 20 × 17 × 17 inches