CIRCA 1845 C HINDLEY & SONS LION CARVED CHESTERFIELD BROWN LEATHER DINING CHAIRS

Description

Royal House Antiques

Royal House Antiques is delighted to offer for sale this very rare and important suite of five fully restored C Hindley & Son’s dining chairs circa 1844-1845

Please note the delivery fee listed is just a guide, it covers within the M25 only for the UK and local Europe only for international, if you would like an accurate quote please send me your postcode and I’ll provide you with the exact price

These are a very important and substantial set of chairs, they have been fully restored to include being stripped back to the bare frames, all the timber has been washed back and French polished , they have then been resprung using the original period coil sprung bases, new webbing fitted, then upholstered with premium Italian cattle grade fully aniline plain natural leather which has been individually hand nail tacked in place using antiqued studs, lastly hand dyed six times and antiqued to give it this one off cigar brown colour.

These chairs have been on a journey as mentioned and they are true investment pieces, ready to serve the new owner for decades to come. Usually, I wouldn’t take dining chairs through such an expensive process however the carving to the legs is so sublime they warranted the treatment, I have never seen such beautiful Lion’s mains and terminating with hairy paws with recessed castors, these are simply put the finest dining chairs on the market anywhere in the world today you can buy.

Dimensions

Height:- 94.5cm

Width:- 57cm

Depth:- 74cm

Seat height:- 50cm

ABOUT THE CABINET MAKERS

Hindley, Charles & Sons Berners Street & Oxford Street, London; cabinet makers, upholsterers and retailers (fl.c.1820-1892) 

Charles Hugh Hindley (b.1792- d.1871) was the son of Christopher, a merchant in Mere, Wiltshire. He moved to London with an elder brother to live with his uncle, who was possibly running the London branch of the Wiltshire business.  

In 1817 Charles joined the upholstery firm of Benjamin Merriman Nias at 32 Berners Street. Within a few years he bought the Nias business with a £1,000 investment from his family. Despite his business being described as a ‘carpet warehouse’ in London directories from 1820-1841, by the mid-1830s upholstery and cabinet work had joined his repertoire and he had taken on more showroom space next door at 31 Berners Street. 

Family records of the 1840s showed that individual custom-order business expanded to also ‘supplying established furnishing houses with goods on wholesale terms’. Jobs ranged from supplying Pentonville Prison with 100 hair mattresses and pillows, to altering spring roller blinds, to fulfilling private commissions with suites of parlour furniture. 

Hindley was the father of eleven children with three involved in the business: Charles Hugh (b. 1818), Frederick (b. 1820), and Albert Daniel (b.1822). Charles Hugh and Frederick joined the family firm about 1832, thus establishing the family partnership, Charles Hindley & Sons.

Albert Daniel learned the carpet manufactory and trade in Kidderminster and eventually established a carpet manufactory in Liversedge, Yorkshire, supplying the family’s London store and others. In 1845 he patented an early tufted carpeting technique.  Charles Hindley & Sons acquired the firm, Miles & Edwards in September 1844, including their premises at 134 Oxford Street. Both companies operated from this address until 1845 when Miles & Edwards was closed. 

The latter’s accounts showed the purchase of various objects by Hindleys in September 1844 ranging from ‘14063…mah [mahogany] 3 tier whatnot’ estimated at £1.5.0 to ‘14071 …walnut cabriole chair in leopard velvet’ for £4.0.0 and ‘14057….set of Honduras mahogany dining tables 4.0 x 13.0” costing £17.10.0.  

The purchase of Miles & Edwards enabled Hindley & Co. to compete with other West End firms by offering everything from cabinet making and upholstery to painted decoration and interior design for the middle and upper class market.

In a sample of 737 orders from October 1842-June 1845, six per cent of the clientele were upper and lower aristocracy with approximately seventy per cent gentry or middle class. The aristocratic clientele included the surnames of Hoare, Kirland, Drummond, Montefiore, Ashburton and Rothschild, and the Oriental Club at 18 Hanover Square (1824). 

Commissions were also executed for:

Lady Fetherstonaugh at Uppark: bills dating 1852 and 1862 for furniture and curtains

C B E Wright of Bolton Hall, Yorkshire: decorative wood panels 

The Earl of Dudley at Himley Hall, Staffordshire: a carved gilt wood centre table with mosaic top, dated 1845 and a bedroom suite (sold by Hampton & Sons, July 1924)

Sir Clifford Constable at Burton Constable (1849)

George Hammond Lucy at Charlecote Park: carpeting (19 December 1844)

The Duke of Cleveland at Raby Castle

The Duke of Argyll, the Duke of Newcastle

Lord and Lady Burton of Burton-on-Trent

Sir William Eden of Windlestone Hall, Durham. 

Buckingham Palace: a small supply of Chintz wall covering for some rooms (1855)  

Surviving marked furniture by Hindley & Co. includes a stamped Regency kidney-shaped desk, veneered in yew and panelled with boxwood and ebony inlay, ornamented with finely-chased mounts and beadings, c.1830 [Connoiseur, November 1978], which is possibly the one illustrated in Gilbert (1996), fig. 498, and a walnut writing table with a raised set of drawers, 1840s, stamped C. Hindley & Sons, illus. (Gilbert (1996), fig. 497 and sold by Sotheby’s, 5 August 1981, lot 209.

The staff at 134 Oxford Street comprised management, sales staff, designers, foreman, clerks, cabinet makers, chair makers, upholsterers, carvers, carpenters and French polishers. They also contracted tradesmen specialising in particular decorative and finishing techniques; such as Joseph Spong, a japanner, and William Stannard, a carver and gilder, who supplied significant orders, 1845-46. Stannard was also recorded in the stock book for ‘Repairing, Cleaning and Varnishing 18 Paintings [frames]  £9.0.0’. 

Family records describe several employees: ‘a large and very ancient carpenter named Tomlinson… a cabinetmaker named Westbrook… [and] a foreman named Sorrel’.

Charles Hindley & Sons showed a large Gothic sideboard at the Great Exhibition in 1851, inspired by Pugin (illustrated Microulis, Studies in the Decorative Arts (Spring/Summer 1998) p. 86) and they exhibited a Gothic bookcase and large sideboard at the 1862 International Exhibition, London (illustrated Microulis, Studies in the Decorative Arts (Spring/Summer 1998) p. 88). Both were elaborately carved pieces, described in the Art Journal Illustrated Catalogue as ‘evidence of sound judgment and advanced taste in the designer, and of able and skilful workmanship’. They also participated in the Building Trades Exhibition at the Agricultural Hall, Islington, 1883 [The Furniture Gazette, 7 April 1883]. They exhibited Japanese leather papers at the Manchester Fine Art & Industrial Exhibition, 1882, and were awarded a silver medal for embossed leather wall hangings at the Calcutta International Exhibition, 1883 [The Furniture Gazette, 18 November 1882 & 10 May 10 May 1884].

They also participated in the Workman’s Exhibition at Central Hall in Holborn, 1890 [The Furniture Gazette, 15 April 1890].  The designers did not sign their work but about fifteen different people were probably involved during the fifty-year period. One designer who worked in the late 1880s was J. Armstrong Stenhouse. He and the cabinet makers, G. R. Mackenzie, D. MacLennan and D. F. Lavach, as well as the carver, F. Lucas, worked on two Hindley exhibition pieces for the 2nd exhibition of the Arts and Crafts Society, London

An archive of 114 drawings (now at the Metropolitan Museum of Art) was collated by Charles Albert Hindley (1863-1947), a grandson of the founder. These designs c.1844-1883 (some illustrated in  Microulis, Furniture History (2001), figs 1-16.), reflected the current trends of reinterpreted styles such as Gothic and Louis, and several seated furniture designs were labelled with specific commercial names such as the ‘Victoria Chair’, ‘Nelson Couch’ the ‘Farnboro Chair’ and the ‘Rutland Chair’. ‘Elizabethan’ twisted turned columns were often included and the influence of Pugin is evident in Hindley’s designs of chairs (illustrated Microulis, Studies in the Decorative Arts (Spring/Summer 1998) p.79 & 80). 

The early company records bore in-house pattern numbers such as the ‘No. 9 Rosewood Elizabethan Occasional Table’, the ‘Easy Chair No. 15’, the ‘Rosewood Bedstead and Cornice No. 3’ and the ‘Amboyna Tea Caddie No. 2’. The numbering of Oxford Street was altered in 1883 and after this date several of the firm’s drawings bore the address of 290-294 Oxford Street. Further archival material including inventory and day books is held in the City of Westminster Archives Centre (M:494/1-35). Innovative pieces provided only a very small percentage of their output. 

The Furniture Gazette recorded several private commissions of architectural fittings 1889-1890:

Col. Baillie at 54 Sloane Street: an inglenook and fittings for the drawing room (1889)

E. H. Pierrepoint at Higham Grange: an inglenook, panelling and ribbed ceiling (1889)

Col. Wright at Mapperly Hall, Nottingham: an inglenook and mantlepieces (1889)

J. W. Malcolm at 19 Green Street, Mayfair: oak panelling (1889)

Maj. General Bonus at The Cedars, Strawberry Hill: carved fitments (1890)

The Stock Exchange, Johnannesburg, South Africa: a carved chimney piece for [15 March 1890]. 

In 1891 Charles Hugh lived as a widower at Hayes Lodge, Camberwell, with three daughters and seven sons including Charles Albert (aged 27) and Edward H (aged 26). Both were upholsterers [1891 Census]. Charles A & Edward opened their own firm at 70-71 Welbeck Street, which eventually merged with Wilkinson & Son of Old Bond Street, becoming Hindley & Wilkinson Ltd. Charles Hindley & Sons closed in November 1892 after a prolonged period of slowing sales due to competition from cheaper manufacturers and internal managerial disputes.

The final straw may have been a fire on the Erskine Road premises which nearly destroyed the works [The Furniture Gazette, 15 August 1891]. In a letter of 9 October 1892 to his brother Albert Daniel Hindley, Charles Hugh wrote ‘We have sold great quantities of goods at great loss, and a fair amount of things sent on sale or return by trade manufacturers, at a moderate profit, scarcely enough to pay current expenses to say nothing of extraordinary expense… However, we are now approaching the second Saturday after we announced to close, Monday 10th will see Bills in the windows, indicating that all the remainder will be offered by Auction Nov. 1 to 5, and then we give possession of premises on the 11th’. 

A sale of stock was announced in The Furniture Gazette, 15 June 1892. The 1895 Post Office Directory listed Charles Hindley as a cabinet maker at Tottenham Mews, but it is not known whether this was the same man. Later Charles Albert Hindley (the grandson of Charles) wrote that C. Hindley & Sons had built a reputation for ‘high priced goods and long profits’.   

Source: DEFM; Joy, ‘The Royal Victorian Furniture-Makers, 1837-87’, The Burlington Magazine (November 1969); Gilbert, Pictorial Dictionary of Marked London Furniture 1700-1840 (1996); Microulis, ‘Charles Hindley & Sons, London House Furnishers of the Nineteenth Century: A Paradigm of the Middle-Range Market’, Studies in the Decorative Arts (Spring/Summer 1998); Microulis, ‘The Furniture Drawings of Charles Hindley & Sons, 134 Oxford Street, London’, Furniture History (2001); Hindley Family papers, Department of Furniture, Textiles & Fashion, V&A.

Please note all measurements are taken at the widest point, if you would like any additional or specific measurements please ask

Any questions please feel free to ask before you bid   

 

ABOUT US

Royal House Antiques is a privately owned family ran business founded in Wimbledon SW19 and now based in Pulborough RH20. We specialise in finding, restoring very fine luxury antique leather seating, along with every single other type of antique ranging from the 16th century to the 20th century. We also stock a number of designer brands such as Fritz Hansen, Ralph Lauren, Cavalli, Charles & Ray Eames, Vitra, David Linley, Rolex, Tiffany, Jager Le Coulter and so on     

 

PAYMENTS

We accept payment via Bitcoin, Bitcoin cash, Ethereum, Bacs, Chaps, PayPal or Card, we would kindly ask that all items are paid for within 48 hours and collected within 7 working days, we can hold all paid items for 14 days free of charge, there after a £20 a week storage fee will apply. We have long term storage which is very economically priced, we are happy to hold stock for as long as needed providing it is arranged prior to the purchase 

If sold items aren’t collected within three months and no arrangements have been made for long term storage you will forfeit the item and payment

 

CONDITION

Please view the very detailed pictures as they form part of the description pertaining to the condition. Please also ask any questions before you bid and not after, all of our items are sold as seen and as listed

Royal House Antiques cannot be held liable for any independent assumptions made regarding the items we sell, if you are unsure on any point, please feel free to ask for clarity  

Please note vintage period and original items such as leather seating will always have natural patina in the form of creasing and wear, we recommend annual waxing to ensure no moisture is lost, also hand dyed leather is not recommended to sit in direct sunlight for prolonged periods of time as it will dry out and fade   

 

DELIVERY OR COLLECTION

This item is available for collection from our Pulborough warehouses RH20-1DF by appointment only, alternatively we can have it delivered nationwide to include Scotland, Wales and Ireland for a fee

Please contact me via email, alternatively my contact information is under the business seller section of the listing, with your postcode for a delivery quotation, as mentioned above the fee listed covers with the M25 for the UK, for international deliveries the amount listed covers local Europe only so parts of Belgium and France

Please be sure to include which item you would like to buy as the price is determined on size and distance, if you would like more than one piece of furniture the courier offers a substantial discount on the second and third item, for international shipping please view the below information   

  

COURIER, LARGE ITEMS ONLY THAT CAN’T BE POSTED

We can arrange delivery nationwide, mostly with our nominated couriers, for Europe we use one reasonably priced professional company that we trust, for the rest of the world we use international shippers that can send any size item crated via air freight within 7-14 days after crating or soft packed and container shipped via sea freight within 30-60 days. The time frames outlined are guides only, non-domestic shipping is almost entirely governed by the airlines, sea freight loading times and custom clearances

Whomever delivers will always require help on the larger items to unload, the price you will be quoted will always be based on this assumption, if this is not possible, please let us know as it will affect the price to send a two-person team

Delivery is to the ground floor only, again if you need help upstairs or in flats etc that’s absolutely not a problem, the couriers charge £10-£20 per flight per man per item, if you have a working elevator then naturally there’s no additional fee

All courier fees are paid by yourself directly to the courier company, the contract for delivery is between yourselves the client and whichever courier you chose from those available I’m happy to accommodate your own courier after a cleared payment has been received, they need to book in a collection time with at least 24 hours notice, all collections must be made within 14 working days of the close of the sale unless agreed by prior arrangement  

 

IMPORT DUTY

Most countries charge some kind of import duty however almost all of our items won’t incur any charges as the items are exempt from tax due to the age and materials used

For European deliveries the price you will be quoted will include all clearance documentation and any customs charges so there won’t be any additional fees

For international deliveries such as the United States there can be some import duty to pay and or a clearance fee, I would estimate that 99% of all deliveries clear customs without being stopped for either

All duties are the responsibility of the purchaser who is the importer, they can’t be covered by the seller or shipping agent or factored in with additional retrospective discounts

 

RETURNS

Royal House Antiques offers a no quibble return policy if the item is not as described, if there are any issues with the piece you will be refunded in full once the item has been returned and inspected within 14 days, alternatively if there is a small issue, we can discuss finding a mutual resolution that makes all parties happy

We don’t offer a sale on approval service which means you can purchase the item, have it delivered and if you simply don’t like it, return it, this comes under change of mind or doesn’t fit. There is a lot of time, money and work involved in transporting goods around the world, the costs incurred can be vast so my advice would be if you are unsure on a piece please ask as many questions as you like to make sure you understand everything before you buy, if you are still unsure then please either arrange a viewing in person or if that’s not possible then don’t buy from an online retailer, perhaps look for a local gallery instead