Liberty & Co. – Arts and Crafts Moorish Armchair with Original Leather Seat
£2,400
Oak armchair by Liberty & Co., Arts and Crafts movement, c.1890, with pierced Moorish panels and original leather seat and backrest with studded detail.
This oak armchair, made by Liberty & Co. during the Arts and Crafts movement c.1890, exemplifies the firm’s fascination with Moorish and Eastern design motifs that informed much of their late nineteenth-century furniture. The structure is rectilinear, softened by carved geometric lattice panels and decorative finials rising from the back uprights.
The seat and backrest retain their original leather, hand-pinned with square brass studs along the perimeter. Each side panel is pierced with repeating quatrefoil motifs, while the front legs are turned and ringed, joined by square stretchers for stability. The design merges functional solidity with an exotic vocabulary characteristic of Liberty’s collaboration with leading designers of the period.
Within the Arts and Crafts idiom, the Moorish influence represented a fascination with craftsmanship beyond the European tradition.
Seat height: 41 cm, arm height: 63.5 cm.
Width: 22 in (55.88 cm)
Depth: 20 in (50.8 cm)
1890-1899
