In 1802 James Wyatt, Surveyor General and Comptroller of the Office of Works from 1796, began a controversial programme of modernisation of Speaker’s House in the Palace of Westminster for Speaker Charles Abbot, a project in which George III took a personal interest both as sovereign and as Wyatt’s employer in the re-gothicising of Windsor. The irregularly shaped house, parallel to Westminster Hall and at right angles to St Stephen’s Chapel, was given a Tudor Gothic stuccoed façade and within Wyatt constructed new state rooms including three fitted out entirely in the Gothic style. For the latter, which were probably situated on the first floor overlooking the river, the regular suppliers to the Royal Household - John Russell and Charles Elliott - were employed to make a large suite which originally consisted of 26 armchairs, 30 side chairs, 6 sofas, 5 tables, 6 screens and a pair of lantern tripods. Everything was japanned black, highly polished to look like ebony and partly gilt. The chairs and sofas were upholstered in scarlet morocco leather with protective covers of scarlet and black printed cotton. Elliott’s bills make clear that the decorative parts of the tables and screens were modelled from ‘ornaments selected from the Abbey’. The selection was no doubt overseen by Wyatt who, as Surveyor of the Abbey since 1782, was well qualified for the task, but as this furniture does not seem to have survived, the precise choice of ornaments is not known. In the case of the seat furniture, of which twenty-three armchairs and five sofas survive in the Royal Collection, Russell’s bills make no mention of the source of designs. However it is clear that here as well, direct quotations were taken from the Abbey. The battlemented string-courses which make up the frames and the diamond-pattern cylindrical shafts forming legs and arm-supports are borrowed from the elaborately carved late Gothic choir stalls in the Henry VII Chapel and skilfully incorporated into the conventional format of early nineteenth-century chair design. The bills from Elliott and Russell for the seat furniture amounted to £1650 8s, the armchairs being charged by Russell at £25 5s each and the upholstery by Elliott at 6 guineas each with a further charge of £2 18s per case cover.

Speaker’s House survived the fire at the Palace of Westminster in 1834, but was demolished in 1842. The chairs are recorded at Windsor later in the same decade.

Catalogue entry adapted from George III & Queen Charlotte: Patronage, Collecting and Court Taste, London, 2004. Att. to Pugin by Laking.