Collections Online
Amgueddfa Cymru – Museum Wales
Advanced Search
Chair
Hall chair, oak, of sgabello form, plain rectangular seat with shaped vertical front and back boards held together by a stretcher fixed at each end by a tusked tenon joint, the back board set into a long notch at the back of the seat and held in place by two inset pieces of oak joined in the middle by a single sliver; the edges of the seat moulded, the front and back boards and stretcher shaped in Gothic form, the boards each divided into two feet by a pointed Gothic arch, the upper back of quatrefoil form with chamfered edges and inset panel painted with A W N Pugin's coat of arms, gules a martlet sable on a bend or.
Pugin pioneered the Victorian Gothic Revival style. He believed it was a form of moral honesty to use methods of construction that were appropriate to the material, and that the construction should be clearly visible. In 1850 he used a pair of contrasting sketches to emphasise this point. One sketch showed the tusked tenon joint used in this chair, labelled ‘the old joint.’ By contrast, he labelled a sketch of a glue pot ‘the modern joint.’ The chair is painted with Pugin’s crest. It is one of a set of four that Pugin designed for use at his own home, The Grange in Ramsgate.