In style and construction thsi armchair complements Morris & Co’s range of ‘Sussex’ chairs, also based on traditonal types, which the Firm manufactured from the mid-1860s. The earliest known illustrations of the ‘Rossetti’ chair date from mid-July 1863, where it appears in photographs taken by William Downey in the garden of Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s house, Tudor House, Cheyne Walk, Chelsea, London, of William Bell Scott, Rossetti and Ruskin. See the chair in the right corner of the room in Henry Treffry Dunn’s gouache of 1882 (National Portrait Gallery) of Rossetti reading his ‘Ballads & Poems’ to Theodore Watts-Dunton in the drawing room at Tudor House, 1882, which has red-painted decoration similar to this example. Although the design of the chair is credited to Rossetti, its style suggests origins in French provincial furniture.
Made by Morris & Co. as part of its rush-seated furniture range, the chair continued to be made well into the 20th century, see the Morris & Co. catalogue c. 1911 ‘Specimens of Upholstered Furniture’ where it was priced at 16/6. The examples with additional red painted decoration, as G77, are uncommon and were probably made to special order; a few green-stained examples are also known.
