A Pair of Victorian Green Leather Button-Back Upholstered Club Armchairs c.1895

SOLD
Origin: English
Period: Late Victorian
Provenance: Unknown
Date: c.1895
Height: 28” or 16” at seats
Width: 39.5”
Depth: 28” (each & at extremities)

The comfortable and wonderfully decorative pair of club armchairs still in their original worn and supple inky green button-back leather, each being horseshoe shaped with rollover backs and gilled frontages sitting on square tapering legs and surviving from the zeniths of nineteenth century England.

In largely untouched condition the chairs are worn and supple, with a great decorative look and feel. The castors are absent though we could add these if so required. There is sporadic worm as photographed which we have treated as a precaution. There are some stitched repairs and a couple of buttons lacking, with two small tears which we have stablised. Overall they are wonderfully country house but still useable.

These chairs certainly fit into the ‘club’ furniture bracket, popular from zeniths of the nineteenth century going into the first quarter of the twentieth. The word club chair harks back to the gentlemen's clubs in nineteenth century England where a gentleman could go to get away from his household (including womenfolk). Once there, he would sink into a well-upholstered leather chair and relax with a drink and perhaps a cigar. The names of the fashionable London streets full of such clubs are still used to name classic club chairs: St. James, Piccadilly and so on. A dictionary definition of a club chair or sofa is "A heavily upholstered piece of furniture with arms and a low back".

So original that you can hear the ice clink and see the smoke rise.
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