This photograph, of Barnard's Inn Hall in London, was taken on 12 November 1892, and is the earliest known photograph of Philip Clissett's chairs. I wrote about this image (and a second one that shows the same chairs plus a high back armchair) in a previous post. At that time, I couldn't show the photographs because of a copyright issue. Now, Historic England allows embedding of the images.
These chairs are undoubtedly some of those that were bought from Clissett by the Art Workers Guild, and organisation that used the Hall for it's meetings. They bought many more chairs over the next twenty years or so, and they are still in regular use in the Guild's current meeting room.
You should find that you can zoom into this photographs, and get very good views of these three chairs. It's interesting that two are unusual in having bulbous underarm turnings, rather than the usual tapered design. The Guild has quite a few chairs in this unusual design, but they are rarely seen elsewhere. That they are amongst the Guild's early purchases (they started buying them in 1888) suggests that they may have been part of James MacLaren's original design.
These chairs are undoubtedly some of those that were bought from Clissett by the Art Workers Guild, and organisation that used the Hall for it's meetings. They bought many more chairs over the next twenty years or so, and they are still in regular use in the Guild's current meeting room.
You should find that you can zoom into this photographs, and get very good views of these three chairs. It's interesting that two are unusual in having bulbous underarm turnings, rather than the usual tapered design. The Guild has quite a few chairs in this unusual design, but they are rarely seen elsewhere. That they are amongst the Guild's early purchases (they started buying them in 1888) suggests that they may have been part of James MacLaren's original design.
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