William Morris Country Chairs
ALL SOLD
William Morris country chairs are synonymous with the Arts and Crafts Movement.
We have four examples, three with new rush seats and one with a split cane seat. The rush is laid in two strands tip to butt and butt to tip. The two strands are twisted on the top of the seat but left flat underneath.
They are priced at €245 each but if they could be traced to the William Morris factory, the price would be ten times that.
The firm of Morris & Co. produced various types of furniture, mostly designed in collaboration with others and had an important influence in breaking with the over-ornate, vulgar and derivative traditions of the Victorian age.
The furniture was always very well made and always with an eye to beauty and originality of design, however plagiarized and hackneyed it may have become later on. (As these probably are). But it was furniture intended for the machine age, and as Morris himself wrote: ‘It is the allowing of machines to be our masters and not our servants that so injures the beauty of life nowadays’. Words that are equally as applicable today.
There are two types of chair known as a Morris chair both named after the design or influence of William Morris. The first is a reclining easy chair with upholstered seat and back and padded arms. The adjustable back fits into a series of grooves along the extended rear arms. In Australia the nearest equivalent would be the squatter’s chair. The second is a rush or cane seated cottage armchair, called a Sussex chair, usually made from ebonised or stained timber and which continued in popularity until the 1920s.
The influence of William Morris can be gauged by the amount of material in the Victoria and Albert Museum
The rush seats (or split cane in one case) have been replaced using authentic materials. Pepie is an expert in natural fibre seating. See our natural fibre seating page by clicking here