A REGENCY MAHOGANY READING/WRITING CHAIR 

A Regency period mahogany and brass mounted reading / writing chair with a horseshoe shaped crest rail mounted with a sliding tray fitted with small drawers, and mounted with a hinged writing surface, flanked by hinged scrolling foliate candle arms, the splat with three pierced Gothic arch panels, with a pear shaped seat on reeded and acanthus carved legs ending in brass topie feet with castors. The mahogany frame retains its original reading slide and brass fitments with candle arms, the whole now covered in vellum green leather seat. Attributed to Morgan & Sanders, Catherine Street, London.

The present chair is a well documented Regency model that has become famous not only through its novel design but also through its inclusion in Rudolph Ackerman’s Repository which documented the changing classicising fashions in dress and furniture of the Regency period.

Ackerman published the following under the heading “Library Reading Chairs”
“ 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 around 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 Saunders, Catherine Street, Strand.”

Literature:
Ackermann’s Regency Furniture and Interiors, Pauline Agius. Marlborough, The Crowood Press, 1984, p.54

CONDITION REPORT ON REQUEST.