The classic Edwin Lutyens Napoleon Chair was the piece that bought us – Lutyens Furniture & Lighting – into being. He designed the chair in 1919 when he moved to a new house in London. We know that he loved it as his own chair – describing it as the most comfortable chair he ever sat it – and we know that he made five, one each for his five children. These had been scattered in diverse directions by the time we came along but Lutyens’s youngest daughter, Mary, allowed us access to hers which then and now resides in London’s Victoria & Albert museum. It was our first piece of Lutyens furniture and remains very special to us, not to mention still a best seller.

That chair is covered in the original black horsehair fabric woven then, as today, on special looms owned and operated by John Boyd Textiles, www.johnboydtextiles.co.uk. What makes the loom special is that, as the strands of tail hair cannot be spun into a continuous length, the loom incorporates a mechanical plucker that picks up individual strands for weaving through the cotton, (or silk) warp.

It is a remarkable thought that we are able to replicate the exact look of the chair using an identical fabric to that used by Lutyens, woven on the same loom as was used for his nearly 100 years on. What is also remarkable is that this fabric is the common thread, (excuse the pun – Lutyens would have approved!) which draws together the names mentioned above as they all used it in their own furniture.

Subsequently, in developing our range of Lutyens star lights, we began incorporating horsehair fabric to cover the glass panes of the star. Though Lutyens used star lanterns on many occasions, this was our own conception rather than his. Covering the panes in a pale shade of horsehair lends translucence to the quality of light and also deals very effectively with the perennial problem of a visible bulb.

Anyone that gets in touch directly with John Boyd Textiles through their website and mentions this blog will receive some free samples of horsehair fabric.

Whilst our current range of star lanterns is based around the traditional 12-pointed star, each point with a pentagonal footprint, Lutyens also often used the much less common but, in our view, even more effective 8-pointed star, each point with a square footprint. We are currently developing this product for our range and should have some good images on it later in the year. One of the most unusual features of this light is that it is suspended from a joint between the base of the points rather than from the point itself. Lutyens – true to form – used a tassel to enhance this particular detail.

Returning to the Napoleon chair, we have long complemented the Edwin Napoleon with its big brother the Robert Napoleon, designed by Edwin’s son Robert in about 1930. Our collection also features other pieces of Robert Lutyens’s furniture designs but these are limited in number. To our great excitement, a book was recently bought to our attention called Modern English Furniture by J C Rogers, published in 1930 by Country Life. In it there are some twenty pieces of furniture designed by Robert and his partner R W Symonds. Many of them – as you would expect – are far from modern for today’s taste but, as with his father, Robert Lutyens had a great knack for coming up with some timeless classics. We are creating a whole new section on our website to showcase the black and white photos from this collection and would be open to recreating any of them from the photographs. Watch this space for more news on this development.

We have two pieces of breaking news this month. Firstly, we are thrilled that, having been out of print for some time, Elizabeth Wilhide’s lovely book “Sir Edwin Lutyens, Designing in the English Tradition” is being republished by National Trust Books. Having seen it recently change hands for several hundred pounds on Amazon, it will be great for the design community to have this book readily available once more. We believe that publication is due for mid-May.

The Lutyens name is synonymous with a single bench that is now made all over the world, mostly very badly and without reference to Lutyens’s original proportions or dimensions. We too make the Thakeham bench; hand made from oiled English, locally sourced Oak. Our 8’ bench has been made with direct reference to the original and our 6’ version has been carefully and appropriately scaled. Of course it is not cheap relative to a mass-produced, Far East made, teak copy that one can pick up at DIY stores and garden centres everywhere. Indeed as copy copies copy, the original design becomes so completely blurred as to loose all integrity! But the definition of cheap looses its meaning when the object in question perishes very quickly. A well-made piece of garden furniture should last at least a generation, (and we have seen Lutyens originals that are three times that age). If it is well maintained, covered or brought in to protect it against the winter elements and regularly oiled and cared for, there is no reason why it shouldn’t go on giving pleasure for a very long time.

As well as the range of benches designed by Lutyens, he also designed a lot of patio and loggia furniture for New Delhi.

Our delicate and intricate Vicereine’s patio set , made in English Oak with well over three hundred separate joints in its table and four chairs, (two handed pairs) is a good example of this, as is our very comfortable caned Loggia chair.

Unrealised amongst our pieces of garden furniture is this variant of the Octagonal table and chairs. We were commissioned to develop the set for outdoor use but for it to accommodate twelve diners. Our solution was to produce two complete sets – two tables and 16 chairs – and to incorporate a joining method with two triangular leaves to make a single table for twelve. The base is slightly different to the realised set, (which was designed for a London building) but is taken directly from Lutyens’s original drawing for the same table for New Delhi.

Whilst on the subject of gardens, we thought it would be fun this month to include the “Lutyens recurring spiral”. Our old friend and expert on Lutyens’s architecture, Michael Edwards, has found the spiral in several of Lutyens’s houses and a variant was also used at Thiepval memorial to the missing of the Somme in Northern France. Michael has studied the geometry of the Lutyens spiral in depth and developed a simple way of recreating it. Please see our website blog for Michael’s full text on this subject together with detailed instructions for making your own spiral including a full sized version of the drawing above. Michael Edwards can be reached on mhmedwards@btinternet.com

A reminder for our US clients, I shall be in the United States in April. I plan to visit decorators and designers around the following dates: Los Angeles and Southern California 9th to 13th April, San Francisco and Northern California 19th and 20th April and New York 23rd to 26th April. I will be speaking at the showrooms of Fortuny on the evening of 25th April to launch our nascent collaboration.

Please let me know at candia@lutyens- furniture.com if you would like to arrange an appointment for any of those dates or if you would like to receive a formal invitation for the Fortuny/Lutyens evening.

Michael Edwards on the Lutyens spiral

Visiting buildings designed by Sir Edwin Lutyens is enjoyable for a great many
reasons and one of these is encountering frequent re-working of ideas, not
simply improvements on an earlier construction but a fresh application of a
device (re-working an idea is not a unique feature of Lutyens’s work but one
common to most practicing architects each having their own particular interests
and vocabulary). While a particular element running through Sir Edwin’s work
was the 1:√2 proportion (see Robert Lutyens’s monograph on his fathers work),
among his many others was the spiral, especially in relation to paving work.

Modern day paving usually exhibits a dearth of creative talent and Lutyens’s
work is a worthy source of inspiration.

My first experience of his adoption of a recurring spiral was in the Dutch garden
at Orchards where the York stone paving laced around four clipped yews – a
device reworked later at, for instance, both Deanery Garden and Hestercombe,
and all in the manner of Cosmatesque decorative pavements dating from the
twelfth and thirteenth centuries, particularly in Rome but as far afield as the
pavement beneath the tower at Westminster Abbey, works typically created or
influenced by the Roman Cosmati family of architects sculptors and craftsmen.

The adoption of the “quincunx” device was a popular form that made use of
this kind of spiral linkage to suit basically a square plan-form, as Lutyens did
for the floor designs in the State Library and the Durbar Hall at Viceroy House,
New Delhi both clearly reminiscent of the of Cosmatesque forms and then the
unexecuted Liverpool cathedral pavements which showed further complexity
that was intended.

Working on Marshcourt, we came across the four-centred spiral in paving there
for the first time. This was a different kind of spiral motif from what I describe
above but occured many times in the work of Lutyens as we found when visiting
various sites but rarely, if ever, shown in published detail drawings.

Examples are at the Mercantile Marine Memorial on Tower Hill [check if this
is correct] using, I recall, slate slips, and the entrance porch at Folly Farm using
brick within the delightful dual-axis paving feature. The war memorial arch at
Thiepval has an impressive sequence of paving details alongside, where a series
of brick spirals is very neatly interspersed by circles.

The precision with which masons were able to install four separate spirals
radiating usually from a square central feature intrigued me and, without having
come across a drawing showing the geometry Lutyens followed, I decided to
have a go myself on a new path at home and using half bricks as the medium.

By doodling around, the solution came as an even simpler geometry than the
Fibonacci spiral, although both rely on precise quarter circles. What I came to
call the “Lutyens spiral” is evolved from a series of concentric circles, drawn
1 module apart – a module being perhaps a half brick dimension (say 4.5″).

By simply cutting a resulting circular dart-board form into four quarters and
slipping each quarter by 1 module, the Lutyens spiral appears. Setting it out on
site requires only a length of wire, hooked at one end and having a series of kinks
or marks 1 module apart and a centre block having four nails spaced 1module
apart to receive the hook. Bricks can then be laid using the wire for setting
out, slipping the hook onto the next nail on each quarter rotation, as the wrire
meets the next nail. We tried this successfully a home to start with and then on
several paving projects, including a Lottery Arts Fund-sponsored pavement at
the Tilford Institute in Surrey using 9″ bricks as the module (not as “tight” as the
half brick version).

The centre as the bricks close in is a form dictated by the geometry and is usualy
a carefully cut single flagstone.

While the individual feature of the kind described here is usually used in
isolation, it is possible to link the Lutyens spirals to suit a grid layout, with
individual spirals leaving one unit and entering the next in an “S” form. This
lining of spirals can be extended over a large area to great effect but I don’t
believe Sir Edwin undertook this anywhere. Needing to create a circular motif
on a paved staircase in new work undertaken at Sullingstead within a series of
new steps, we found the grid linkage of four-centred spirals was not suited to
infilling the circular form. Our desire was for a centre spiral with a ring of further
spirals around it. The quincunx device suited a square format – even a square
diagonally set within a larger square, but something new was needed to form a
circle.

We devised the six-centred spiral for the project and the result was successful
– even then going on to use the device to form an extensive ring of twenty four
six-centred spirals around the centre pond feature! To assist the mason, we
made a machine for laying these complex linkages – somewhat like a very large
steel clock-spring with gaps between the metal elements to allow the bricks to
drop into place on the prepared mortar bed. The flexing of the coils made its use
a little disappointing but it was used at least for marking out the spirals where
accuracy was essential.

I have referred here to the traditional quincunx form; how its musical
counterpart composed by Elizabeth Lutyens in 1959/60 relates to her father’s
work is maybe the subject for another study!

“I remember the summer of 1911 at Varengeville, where my father had built a house for Guillaume Mallet, which is still there. It was the hottest and most lovely summer I can ever recall. The Mallet’s chauffeur had a dark, sweeping moustache. He wore leather gaitters and goggles; and we would rush into the Dieppe countryside at the terrifying speed of 20 miles an hour in his early Renault” Robert Lutyens

One of Lutyens’s finest country houses is the magnificent Bois des Moutiers in Varengeville-sur-Mer on the French Channel coast. Remarkable for many things, it is one of only two Lutyens houses remaining in the hands of the family for whom it was built, (the other being Lambay Castle in Ireland). Sadly, it is now on the market but hopefully plans for an Anglo-Fench “entente” to purchase it as a centre of culture for both nations will come to fruition. For more information on the house with some lovely pictures, see this offering from the BBC. (you will probably have to put up with a small commercial before the clip but persevre.)

One of the remarkable features of the house, due entirely to its tenure in the hands of one family, is that its original collection of Arts & Crafts furniture remains intact. When we first saw the house many years ago, one little table stood out for us.(above right) Very A&C, made of Oak with three turned legs at three points of an equilateral triangle and a circular top, it drew our attention for the simple reason that the basic structure was exactly that of our own – much later – Delhi Occasional Table (1930) in which the three leaves of the table folded down the sides of the triangular base, the whole top turning about a central axis to allow them to rest on the points of the triangle when open.

Whilst we have no direct evidence that Lutyens actually designed the Varengeville table, he certainly would have known it and probably would have placed it in the house. It is equally certain that it was a detail he recalled for the Delhi Table, redressing it in full classical language. See our website blog for more on this theme.

One of the most interesting things that we have discovered over our many years researching and building Lutyens furniture is that of the three sources available to us – his own drawings, photographs of original interiors and original pieces – each has its own role to play. Many pieces such as the Delhi table exist as drawings but without any evidence they were ever built. In some cases we have seen both drawing and result; the result a disappointing facsimile of the drawing, (Spiderback chairs at Campion Hall a case in point). In yet others, we have plenty of documentary evidence that Lutyens designed the piece but have had only an original to work from. The most obvious example of this is his archetypal Napoleon Chair.

Another small table designed by Lutyens is still in place in New Delhi where it remains one of very few surviving original pieces. Sadly, it is not a table that we have made, mainly as it typifies all that is most difficult in many of Lutyens’s designs. The little pits that run up the legs are precisely measured, expanding by the minutest proportions as they rise. We have attempted to calculate the degree by which each pit is larger than the one below and have come up with 0.067mm or 0.0026”.

We often talk about the precision of Lutyens in his work and this table goes a long way to illustrate it, as does the following quote from one of his office staff:
“An instance notorious in the office at the time was the diminishing height of the rustication blocks on the Midland Bank, each of which was to be a mathematical fraction less than the one below it and involved a diminution by the amount of 0.273 recurring of an inch. He would admit of no approximation in the drawings, on the plea that plenty of inaccuracies would creep in without beginning in the office. ‘About! I don’t know what you mean by “about.”‘ he would say. At any time he was prepared to alter his fundamental unit if he saw a better, thereby jettisoning all drawings to date and thereby causing all-night last-minute ‘panics’ in the office.” W.A.S. Lloyd.

Moving on from the ridiculous to the sublime, we have had a couple of enquiries in recent times for us to adapt our billiard light to illuminate a long kitchen work surface. These have not yet translated into production but we have produced a drawing, illustrating the idea and we will shortly be adding this to our website. We would be able to add further branches and it might also work well over a bar or an open pass in a restaurant.

Finally, I shall be in the United States in April. I plan to visit decorators and designers around the following dates: Los Angeles and Southern California 9th to 13th April, San Francisco and Northern California 19th and 20th April and New York 23rd to 26th April. Please let me know at candia@lutyens-furniture.com if you would like to arrange an appointment for any of those dates.

In the beginning – 1987

Our very first product was the Napoleon Chair designed in 1919 for Lutyens’s own home.  We had tried and failed to get Casina, the Italian furniture maker to incorporate it into their “Architectural Range” so we decided it to take the plunge and give it a go on our own.

Having made the prototype, we needed to photograph it and our great and very old friend Nic Espinosa, Director of the dance school The London Studio Centre and chairman of British Ballet Organisation agreed to shoot it for us.  This he did in his dance studios at the LSC in King’s Cross.  While the shoot was in progress, a young ballet student wandered into the studio looking for her class.  Seizing the opportunity, we grabbed her!

The end result was not only our very first product shot but also our first Christmas card.
Apologies to those of you that have seen it before but we feel that this spontaneous image of the young dancer is as enduring as that of the chair itself – a timeless classic.

Wilsford was built for the Tennant family and inherited in 1920 by Stephen Tennant, one time lover of Seigfried Sassoon and much photographed by Cecil Beaton who was, “one of the first to encourage Tennant’s eccentric vocation of doing nothing in life -  but doing it with great originality and flamboyance”. Reputedly, Tennant spent the last 17 years of his life in bed and for the last 50 of his 81 years worked on a single unfinished novel.

The interior design was done by Syrie Maugham who, by co-incidence, collaborated 1936 with Robert Lutyens,(Edwin’s son) on Brook House on Park Lane in London at about the same time.
On Stephen Tennant’s death in 1987, Wilsford was sold and it’s -often-bizarre- contents auctioned.
The new owner had grand plans for the wine cellar and asked us to design a large table to accommodate subterranean dinner parties. To go with the table were a dozen or so chairs, many of them able to be dismantled for easy storage, servery units and the wine trolleys.  The latter were made with wheel bearings from BMW and tires from Pirelli.  The metal basket that held the wine was hand forged.  No attention to detail was spared.

Latest news from Lutyens Furniture & Lighting.. A Tale of a Table Time flies! It was 1991 when we asked to design a set of furniture for the wine cellar at Wilsford Manor. Wilsford was finished in 1906, on the site of an older house, by Detmar Blow, a good friend of Lutyens and one of the very few other architects with whom Lutyens considered going into practice. In Blow, Lutyens had a direct link back to the greats of the Arts and Crafts movement, William Morris and John Ruskin and there is little doubt that his influence would have been felt in much of Lutyens’s early work. Wilsford was built for the Tennant family and inherited in 1920 by Stephen Tennant, one time lover of Seigfried Sassoon and much photographed by Cecil Beaton who was, “one of the first to encourage Tennant’s eccentric vocation of doing nothing in life -  but doing it with great originality and flamboyance”. Reputedly, Tennant spent the last 17 years of his life in bed and for the last 50 of his 81 years worked on a single unfinished novel. The interior design was done by Syrie Maugham who, by co-incidence, collaborated 1936 with Robert Lutyens,(Edwin’s son) on Brook House on Park Lane in London at about the same time. On Stephen Tennant’s death in 1987, Wilsford was sold and it’s -often-bizarre- contents auctioned. The new owner had grand plans for the wine cellar and asked us to design a large table to accommodate subterranean dinner parties. To go with the table were a dozen or so chairs, many of them able to be dismantled for easy storage, servery units and the wine trolleys.  The latter were made with wheel bearings from BMW and tires from Pirelli.  The metal basket that held the wine was hand forged.  No attention to detail was spared. New Website We are really pleased to announce the launch of our newly rebuilt website.  We hope that you will find it easier to navigate, more modern in look and functionality and a better browsing experience.  Having been dragged kicking and screaming into the 21st century we also now have live feeds to Twitter and Facebook and a link to our blog where you will find, amongst other things, back copies of this news letter.  Also, in response to several requests, we have now put printable “tear sheets” on every page.  They take in most but not all of our product.  They will remain work in progress for a little while, so if you see “coming soon” we promise you it is.  We hope you enjoy looking at the site and we would really appreciate any feedback. Of the several pieces made, the table was and remains the most interesting.  We had to make sure that the oak was compatible with the controlled humidity of the wine cellar.  It was based on the Drogo kitchen table but the client wanted to avoid the large stretcher rail of the latter in order to be able to sit comfortably around it.  The result we came up with was a cantilevered rail with the legs inset.  The table itself was a complicated combination of D-ends, free standing insets and leaves expanding from an 8-seater to one that could seat 16-20.  This was a monumental, architectural beast of a table that we have only made once subsequent to the Wilsford job and which now lives in Australia.  Born of Lutyens, to fit a Detmar Blow space and developed for purpose by LFL, it is a piece we are immensely proud of and look forward to building again. Check out the new website here  follow on Twitter | friend on Facebook | forward to a friend Copyright © 2012 Lutyens Furniture & Lighting, All rights reserved.  unsubscribe from this list | update subscription preferences

Very early Lutyens furniture was largely influenced by the Arts & Crafts movement.  Many pieces from this epoch exist in the hands of his family but very few drawings survive.  Examples amongst our own collection are the Edwin Napoleon Chair, and the Rush Settle.

As time progressed, with the commission for New Delhi and also for various London buildings, Lutyens turned to his less recent history. It would appear he was influenced by “A History of English Furniture” by Percy MacQuoid, published in 1904 and still regarded as the first serious study of the subject.

However, whereas Lutyens’s contemporaries such as Lloyd-Wright, Mackintosh and Le Corbusier were trying to rationalise and simplify historical designs, these were clearly secondary considerations; rather he pursued a new interpretation of historical style.  He reinvents scale and complicates detail.  The end result is surprising and “strange”, both beautiful and familiar but perplexing and extraordinarily challenging for any poor furniture maker, (as we well know!).

Some years ago we met by chance with Paul Keating, former Prime Minister of Australia and a great enthusiast of and expert on Lutyens.  He remarked that he found it difficult to understand why he – Lutyens – had to make the furniture designs “all so f***ing complicated”!

To illustrate this, we have decided to focus on four desk chairs.  All are extraordinarily beautiful works of art and all are historical derivatives of English chair making and Lutyens imagination and extraordinary creativity.

Desk Chair

In his own desk chair – derived from the Queen Anne style – of which we own and use the original today, we have a simple beginning to the progression.  We don’t know when he had his own chair made, though we do know that he later drew it for use in Delhi and it was realised, as evidenced by the Delhi photo archives.  Jill Lever comments on it in her book, Architects Designs for Furniture (1982).

Below: His own desk chair design.

Derived from this is the Mansfield Chair, which offers a throne-like presence by over-scaling the arm detail and adding the cross bracing of the legs.  It is an imposing statement for an imposing user, (See lower right)
Below: Mansfield chair.

“A little Belgian detective” of literary fame but oh well!).

The Midland Bank insignia chair is possibly the most complex of any chair in our collection.  The back is dished both vertically and horizontally and the monogram is in relief.  It lends a nod and a wink to Chippendale but then goes further.  We offer the chair with initials other than M and B and design every monogram to follow the spirit of Lutyens’s intentions.

The Pall Mall Chair is the most interesting of all and, despite all the many drawings attached to it, we have never been able to find the original piece.  The arm detail culminates in a swan’s neck on the horizontal; a movement on from the tucked under curve of the other three.  The fluid “S” shape of the arm to lower leg stretcher flows within the circumference of the circular seat.

Pall Mall

We know that Lutyens loved this design as he used it in not only Pall Mall, (for which we have named it) but also in Delhi.  And in Delhi, he drew it again with a “C” replacing the “S”, (unrealised as far as we know).  It is the culmination of his experimentation with chair design.  It is also beautifully drafted with a care to detail that is sometimes lacking in his earlier pieces – nothing is left to chance for the maker and, though we generally make modern drawings from his originals, in this case the attention to detail is beyond perfection and left us with nothing to question.

The common thread through these four chairs – and in fact in most of Lutyens’s designs for furniture – is that he works not only by placing elements together rationally, but that the design is contrived by working from a solid and then carefully removing the superfluous.  In other words, it is , in its own way, sculpture!

Lutyens at the Ashmoleon – an unfinished detective story?

A little while ago, our head of design happened to find himself at the Ashmoleon Museum in Oxford.  Associated with the University of Oxford, the Ashmoleon contains a world-renowned collection of Western applied arts and antiquities.  
The aforementioned found himself in the room containing their collection of stringed instruments including some very special violins and cellos by Stradivarius.  To his surprise, he recognised the display cases as entirely indicative of Lutyens’s hand.    Subsequently we have had a dialogue with the Ashmoleon and taken our own photos.  It transpires that most of the cases are reproductions of a single first case, which they acquired several decades ago, (consistent with Lutyens’s dates).  These they have made themselves in different sizes.  They have no record of how they acquired the first but, in principal, agree from what we have told and shown them that our view of likely authorship is probably right.
Some time on from the Ashmoleon discovery, (which was made a couple of years ago) we were interested earlier this year to see this bookcase in an auction catalogue.  Its provenance was impeccable and though markedly different to the display cases it also bears some marked similarities.  If you lose the Gothic arches at the base of the bookcase, the remainder of the base itself is remarkably similar to that of the Ashmoleon cabinet.  The Tuscan columns are Lutyens through and through, (see our Marsh Court table above); the symmetrical dividers and pediment of the bookcase are also very Lutyens though not “on display” in the cabinet.

Sadly the Ashmoleon don’t seem to have kept a record of which of the cabinets was their original, (they are presented with one, two and three central columns) though it is likely that this could be determined without too much difficulty and an expert eye.  Our efforts to get them to acknowledge Lutyens in the room have so far fallen on deaf ears but we remain on the case!

Lutyens Unrealised 

This month in the “unrealised” section, we have chosen a chair designed for New Delhi with a circular seat, semi-circular fanned back with caned panels and an extravagant under structure of hoops and pentagonal legs.  This is an interesting chair for several reasons.  First it absolutely epitomises what we believe to be the case of most of Lutyens’s furniture intended for New Delhi – that it was almost certainly never made.  Secondly, though the heading has been cut from the cropped drawing here, it reads: “N.W. wing, upper basement floor, sitting room.  N^o 2 required.”  We could quite easily put an estimate on what a pair of these chairs might cost to make today and, even allowing for local craftsmanship, one can only imagine what a hole in any budget this level of detail in an insignificant space might have led to in the context of the wider scheme.  And it was quite some detail – this single chair, (N^o 2 required) was drawn up in no less than three drawings, (furniture drawing n^os 653, 654 and 655) with nothing left to chance; all for a sitting room in an “upper basement”.

One of the things that we are really interested in when it comes to Lutyens’s body of work is the sheer amount of it turned out by a relatively small office, (tiny by today’s standards) and the degree to which he was able to turn his eye from the magnificent big picture to the minutiae of detail and several hundred pieces of furniture.

If, as seems highly likely, the chair wasn’t made, it is all too apparent why not but the legacy of the drawings gives us a wonderful opportunity to study his games of geometry and architectural language.  As often is the case, the circle and semi-circle are predominant features, as is the interplay with circle and triangle with the three half hoops of the under structure, (see our occasional table for another example of this) but added intricacy of detail comes in on the pentagonal foot, (which gets drawing 654 almost to itself!).

This is a great piece of furniture in terms of its form but even we have to concede that it is hard to assign it much function!  Neither a dining chair nor for lounging in and with an extravagance of detail that would hardly render it economical, its place isn’t entirely obvious.  It is, however, a statement that is unique and, in the right setting could be quite magnificent.

The Billiard Light

Lutyens probably first designed this billiard light for Marshcourt in 1901.   He used it again in Delhi and at least two other houses, Heathcote Manor and Gledstone Hall, the latter competed in the early 20s.  On the original drawings, no material was specified but we are sure they were all made from timber.  For this reason – it not being strong enough to deal with the structural forces in play – none survive.  We have in fact seen the remains of the Gledstone light in bits in a box, very sad!

We now make two versions of the light, both in bronze.  The larger, which we have recently remade for Marshcourt, (as featured in the September issue of Architectural Digest) is sized for a full-scale billiard table, the smaller has been adapted for a table closer to an American pool table.

There are three issues with the billiard light: weight, rigidity and concealing the wiring.  In remaking the light, we produced hand carved hardwood patterns for the bronze sand castings.  These castings are hand fettled and machined down to the minimum thickness to keep the weight down. The chandelier is a sandwich construction with the bronze elements clad over a rigid steel armature, fixed with dowels and bronze welded joints. The final piece to be applied is the capping to the arches – this is fitted last leaving a channel for concealing the wires.

Lutyens’s original design called for the billiard light to be suspended from a single pole.  At 75kg for the larger light, this is an engineering consideration for the ceiling above, not to mention the structure of the light and we have adapted it for two suspension points which we feel does not interfere with the aesthetics of the piece whilst giving the light considerably better rigidity and stability and spreading the load over the ceiling.

We offer shades in glass and stove enamel as well as parchment and fabric.

The capital of the illustrated column is the Delhi order; Lutyens’s own take on a Corinthian column.  The main feature of the order is the use of solid bells.  The myth persists that there is a legend of Indian folklore that says that dynasties fall to the sound of ringing bells and that a solid, “unringable” bell will ensure that the dynasty in question – the British Raj – would never fall.  In truth, this is almost certainly nonsense as described by Edwin’s son Robert in his monograph on his father,

The late Duke of Connaught, who visited Viceroy’s house during the building, asked father why he had hung bells from the tops of the columns.  Why?  Indeed why?  What reply is possible to such a question?  A question promoted by slightly condemnatory curiosity.  How explain in any communicable terms the treatment of some one factor of design: the joint issue of experience and of something far more personal?  Father would never dream of dealing harshly with the ignorant, and would hesitate to give unnecessary offence to useful patronage.  In this instance he besought his wits for an answer; and so the legend grew.  “Did you never hear, sir, of the Mogul superstition that the ringing of bells proclaimed the end of the dynasty?” he asked.  “That is why my bells are made of stone!”  The Duke was delighted with the loyalty of the conceit.  The rest who heard it were not to know that so circumspect a fiction was without foundation in fact.

In his buildings, Lutyens went on to use the Delhi order in Campion Hall, 120 Pall Mall, (London) and Middleton Park.   In his furniture, Lutyens used the Delhi bell in the 1929 set.  In this case the wooden bells form an integral part of the carved guilloche base.  It appears again in the Delhi Mercury Ball chandelier.

The meaning of the crest is not entirely clear though Lutyens was extremely fond of the circle in design.  We believe that the positioning of stars at clock points three and eight, (Fibonacci numbers) relates to the Golden Section, something he embraced. We are not sure how this relates to the star at twelve and would welcome theories from all comers, (and will publish the most plausible).A final point of interest of the arms, which was clearly an accident rather than “by design” was that, awarded in 1936, the charter was signed by the uncrowned, (and never crowned) Edward VIII.  By definition, there can’t be too many of them!

A little while ago, our head of design happened to find himself at the Ashmoleon Museum in Oxford.  Associated with the University of Oxford, the Ashmoleon contains a world-renowned collection of Western applied arts and antiquities.
The aforementioned found himself in the room containing their collection of stringed instruments including some very special violins and cellos by Stradivarius.  To his surprise, he recognised the display cases as entirely indicative of Lutyens’s hand.    Subsequently we have had a dialogue with the Ashmoleon and taken our own photos.  It transpires that most of the cases are reproductions of a single first case, which they acquired several decades ago, (consistent with Lutyens’s dates).  These they have made themselves in different sizes.  They have no record of how they acquired the first but, in principal, agree from what we have told and shown them that our view of likely authorship is probably right.

Some time on from the Ashmoleon discovery, (which was made a couple of years ago) we were interested earlier this year to see this bookcase in an auction catalogue.  Its provenance was impeccable and though markedly different to the display cases it also bears some marked similarities.  If you lose the Gothic arches at the base of the bookcase, the remainder of the base itself is remarkably similar to that of the Ashmoleon cabinet.  The Tuscan columns are Lutyens through and through, (see our Marsh Court table above); the symmetrical dividers and pediment of the bookcase are also very Lutyens though not “on display” in the cabinet.

Sadly the Ashmoleon don’t seem to have kept a record of which of the cabinets was their original, (they are presented with one, two and three central columns) though it is likely that this could be determined without too much difficulty and an expert eye.  Our efforts to get them to acknowledge Lutyens in the room have so far fallen on deaf ears but we remain on the case!

Lutyens Unrealised

This month in the “unrealised” section, we have chosen a chair designed for New Delhi with a circular seat, semi-circular fanned back with caned panels and an extravagant under structure of hoops and pentagonal legs.  This is an interesting chair for several reasons.  First it absolutely epitomises what we believe to be the case of most of Lutyens’s furniture intended for New Delhi – that it was almost certainly never made.  Secondly, though the heading has been cut from the cropped drawing here, it reads: “N.W. wing, upper basement floor, sitting room.  No 2 required.”  We could quite easily put an estimate on what a pair of these chairs might cost to make today and, even allowing for local craftsmanship, one can only imagine what a hole in any budget this level of detail in an insignificant space might have led to in the context of the wider scheme.  And it was quite some detail – this single chair, (No 2 required) was drawn up in no less than three drawings, (furniture drawing nos 653, 654 and 655) with nothing left to chance; all for a sitting room in an “upper basement”.

One of the things that we are really interested in when it comes to Lutyens’s body of work is the sheer amount of it turned out by a relatively small office, (tiny by today’s standards) and the degree to which he was able to turn his eye from the magnificent big picture to the minutiae of detail and several hundred pieces of furniture.

If, as seems highly likely, the chair wasn’t made, it is all too apparent why not but the legacy of the drawings gives us a wonderful opportunity to study his games of geometry and architectural language.  As often is the case, the circle and semi-circle are predominant features, as is the interplay with circle and triangle with the three half hoops of the under structure, (see our occasional table for another example of this, http://www.lutyens-furniture.com/files-tables/occasional_table.html) but added intricacy of detail comes in on the pentagonal foot, (which gets drawing 654 almost to itself!).

This is a great piece of furniture in terms of its form but even we have to concede that it is hard to assign it much function!  Neither a dining chair nor for lounging in and with an extravagance of detail that would hardly render it economical, its place isn’t entirely obvious.  It is, however, a statement that is unique and, in the right setting could be quite magnificent.

The Billiard Light

Lutyens probably first designed this billiard light for Marshcourt in 1901.   He used it again in Delhi and at least two other houses, Heathcote Manor and Gledstone Hall, the latter competed in the early 20s.  On the original drawings, no material was specified but we are sure they were all made from timber.  For this reason – it not being strong enough to deal with the structural forces in play – none survive.  We have in fact seen the remains of the Gledstone light in bits in a box, very sad!

We now make two versions of the light, both in bronze.  The larger, which we have recently remade for Marshcourt, (as featured in the September issue of Architectural Digest) is sized for a full-scale billiard table, the smaller has been adapted for a table closer to an American pool table.

There are three issues with the billiard light: weight, rigidity and concealing the wiring.  In remaking the light, we produced hand carved hardwood patterns for the bronze sand castings.  These castings are hand fettled and machined down to the minimum thickness to keep the weight down. The chandelier is a sandwich construction with the bronze elements clad over a rigid steel armature, fixed with dowels and bronze welded joints. The final piece to be applied is the capping to the arches – this is fitted last leaving a channel for concealing the wires.

Lutyens’s original design called for the billiard light to be suspended from a single pole.  At 75kg for the larger light, this is an engineering consideration for the ceiling above, not to mention the structure of the light and we have adapted it for two suspension points which we feel does not interfere with the aesthetics of the piece whilst giving the light considerably better rigidity and stability and spreading the load over the ceiling.

We offer shades in glass and stove enamel as well as parchment and fabric.