EXPERT COMMENT David Harvey the room to get the best light rather than adjusting one’s chair. Chairs with book stands were mentioned in Thomas Sheraton’s 1803 Cabinet Dictionary as: “…intended to make the exercise of reading easy and for the convenience of taking down a note or quotation from any subject.” It is, however, Ackermann’s Repository of Arts, Literature, Commerce, Manufactures, Fashions and Politics that tells us who made this chair. The periodical was published monthly from 1809 to 1828 and included hand-coloured plates of interiors, furniture and the decorative arts – a Regency equivalent of today’s World of Interiors magazine. Plate 19, below, published in September 1810, gives the true provenance of our library chair.
Sales pitch If the journal reader could not understand how it worked, the editorial goes on to describe the functions thus: “Gentlemen either sit across with the face towards the desk, contrived for reading, writing &c. and which, by a rising rack, can be elevated at pleasure; or, when its occupier is tired of the first position, it is with the greatest ease turned round in a brass grove, to either one side or the other; in which case, the gentleman sits sideways. The circling arms in either way form a pleasant easy back, and also in every direction, supports for the arms. As a proof of their real comfort and convenience, they are now in great sale at the warerooms of the inventors, Messrs. Morgan and Sanders, Catherine-street, Strand.”
Shedding light
Waxing lyrical David Harvey sheds light on an ingenious Regency period library chair designed to make reading easier
E
ven as a child, I was fascinated by the ingenuity of our cabinetmakers who produced pieces of metamorphic furniture to solve everyday problems. When I first saw this chair it sparked all sorts of memories of years gone by. I must have handled half a dozen of them over the past 50 years – each being very similar, with differences only in their finish and decoration. Imagine living in a Regency home with a library where you would read and write for both education and pleasure – all in an age long before electric lighting. In those days you would have been reliant on daylight and candlelight to pursue your pastime. So consider just how annoying it would have been to follow the sun around
16 ANTIQUE COLLECTING
Above A library reading
chair by Morgan and Sanders Above right A mention
in the prestigious magazine guaranteed popularity among the cognoscenti Right The chair was
deftly articulated to allow the sitter to maximise the light
Not only was the library chair fitted with articulated brass candle holders, to give light on whatever one was reading at night, it also has a pull-out, ink-and-pen drawer on each side of the book stand, under the adjustable book rack, which doubles as a writing surface when horizontal. The arcade to the back splat and the arm supports give it a strong Gothic feel. One could, of course, always use it as a conventional chair – assisted by the fact that the reading flap can be lowered out of sight completely.
