William Burges - Furniture

Furniture

Burges's furniture was, second to his buildings, his major contribution to the Victorian Gothic Revival; as Crook writes, "More than anyone, it was Burges, with his eye for detail and his lust for colour, who created the furniture appropriate to High Victorian Gothic." Enormous, elaborate and highly painted, Crook considers his "art furniture medieval in a way no other designer ever approached." The first detailed study of Burges's work in this area was by Charles Handley-Read in his article in The Burlington Magazine of November 1963, Notes on William Burges's Painted Furniture. Despised as much as his buildings in the reaction against Victorian taste that occurred in the twentieth century, his furniture came back into fashion in the latter part of that century and now commands very high prices.

Burges's furniture is characterised by its historical style, its mythological iconography, its vibrant painting and, often, by rather poor workmanship. The Great Bookcase collapsed in 1878 and required complete restoration. The painting of his furniture was central to Burges's views on its purpose. Describing his ideal medieval chamber in the lecture on furniture, delivered as part of the Art Applied to Industry series, he writes of its fittings being "covered with paintings; it not only did its duty as furniture, but spoke and told a story." The designs were frequently collaborative, with artists from Burges's circle completing the painted panels that they mostly comprise. The contributors were often notable, Vost's sales catalogue for the Mirrored Sideboard suggesting that some of its panels were by Dante Gabriel Rossetti and Edward Burne-Jones.

"His furniture is witty, inventive and erudite."

—Gordon Campbell writing on the furniture of Burges in The Grove Encyclopedia of Decorative Arts (2006).

Much of his early furniture, such as the Great Bookcase and the Zodiac Settle, were designed for his offices at Buckingham Street and subsequently moved to the Tower House. The Great Bookcase was also part of Burges's contribution to the Medieval Court at the Great Exhibition. Others, such as the Yatman Cabinet, were created as commissions. Later pieces, such as the Crocker Dressing Table and the Golden Bed and its accompanying Vita Nuova washstand, were specifically made for suites of rooms at the Tower House. The Narcissus washstand was originally made for Buckingham Street and subsequently moved to Burges's red bedroom at the Tower House. John Betjeman, later Poet Laureate and a leading champion of the art and architecture of the Victorian Gothic Revival, was left the remaining lease on the Tower House, including some of the furniture, by E.R.B. Graham in 1961. He gave the washstand to the novelist Evelyn Waugh who made it the centrepiece of his novel, The Ordeal of Gilbert Pinfold, in which Pinfold is haunted by the stand.

Examples of Burges's painted furniture can be seen in major museums including the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Detroit Institute of Arts, the National Museum of Wales and the Manchester Art Gallery. The Higgins Art Gallery & Museum, Bedford holds a particularly fine collection, begun with a large number of purchases from the estate of Charles and Lavinia Handley-Read, including the Narcissus washstand, Burges's bed and the Crocker Dressing Table. The most recent acquisition by the Bedford Museum is the Zodiac Settle (1869–70), painted by Henry Stacy Marks. The Museum paid £850,000 for the settle, comprising a £480,000 grant from the National Heritage Memorial Fund, £190,000 from the Trustees of the Cecil Higgins Art Gallery and £180,000 from the Art Fund after the British government imposed an export ban on the work.