Set of Florally Decorated, Green Chairs, Vienna around 1900

Beau­ti­ful­ly dec­o­rat­ed chairs with an oval, anthemion-shaped (hon­ey­suck­le blos­som) open­work and carved back­rest. The set con­sists of two arm­chairs with slight­ly flared arm­rests and two side chairs. The chairs, paint­ed in green with seg­ment­ed gold accents, are adorned all around with very fine gar­lands of flow­ers, each fea­tur­ing a cen­tral­ly depict­ed ruby framed by pearls.

The front chair legs are par­tial­ly flut­ed and dec­o­rat­ed with leaf motifs. The restored chairs are cur­rent­ly uphol­stered with a white base fab­ric and will be cov­ered with a dec­o­ra­tive fab­ric of the client’s choice in our inhouse- work­shop.

These are tru­ly spe­cial, very rare chairs with exquis­ite green fin­ish­es and intri­cate flo­ral and jew­el­ry-style paint­ing, mak­ing them per­fect as seat­ing for a small salon or sunroom.

On the Design:

The chair form, with pierced back­rests in an anthemion (hon­ey­suck­le blos­som) shape, cor­re­sponds to a design from March 1785, drawn by Gil­low of Lan­cast­er and depict­ed in the Esti­mate Sketch Books (see S. Stu­art, Gil­lows of Lan­cast­er and Lon­don 1730 – 1840, Lon­don, 2008, p. 175, as well as a sim­i­lar design on p. 135). How­ev­er, the basic form of the chairs exist­ed even ear­li­er, appear­ing between 1775 – 80 on the trade card of Vick­ers and Rout­ledge, Con­duit Street, Lon­don (pub­lished in A. Heal, The Lon­don Fur­ni­ture Mak­ers, Lon­don, 1953, p. 72, pl. 9). A suite of seat­ing fur­ni­ture in this style was also deliv­ered around 1780 to Lyonel, 5^th Earl of Dysart for Ham House, Sur­rey (see S. Thorn­ton, ​“Ham House,” Fur­ni­ture His­to­ry, 1980, fig. 188). Anoth­er iden­ti­cal suite, con­sist­ing of open arm­chairs and match­ing win­dow seats, was sup­plied by Gil­low to George, 4^th Earl and 1^st Mar­quis of Chol­monde­ley (1749 – 1827) for Chol­monde­ley Cas­tle, Cheshire, now at Houghton Hall. They are illus­trat­ed in S. Mac­quoid, The Age of Sat­in­wood, Lon­don, 1908, figs. 102 and 115.

His­to­ry – Gil­lows of Lan­cast­er:

The firm of Gil­lows of Lan­cast­er traces its ori­gins to Robert Gil­low (1704 – 1772), who estab­lished his work­shop in 1730 after train­ing as a cab­i­net­mak­er. In the 1730s, he began exploit­ing the lucra­tive West Indies trade by export­ing mahogany fur­ni­ture and import­ing rum and sug­ar. After his death in 1772, the busi­ness was con­tin­ued by his two sons, Richard (1734 – 1811) and Robert (1745 – 1793). In 1764, Thomas Gil­low and William Tay­lor estab­lished a Lon­don branch at 176 Oxford Road, today known as Oxford Street.

The firm quick­ly gained a rep­u­ta­tion as a sup­pli­er of high-qual­i­ty fur­ni­ture to the wealth­i­est fam­i­lies in the coun­try. Toward the end of the 19^th cen­tu­ry, Gil­lows faced finan­cial dif­fi­cul­ties and entered into a loose finan­cial arrange­ment with War­ing of Liv­er­pool from 1897, which was legal­ly for­mal­ized by the cre­ation of War­ing & Gil­low in 1903.

War­ings of Liv­er­pool had been found­ed by John War­ing, who had moved to the city from Belfast in 1835 and estab­lished a whole­sale fur­ni­ture busi­ness. His son, Samuel James War­ing, expand­ed the busi­ness rapid­ly dur­ing the 1880s, fur­nish­ing hotels and pub­lic build­ings across Europe. He also found­ed the War­ing-White Build­ing Com­pa­ny, which con­struct­ed the Liv­er­pool Corn Exchange, Selfridge’s Depart­ment Store, and the Ritz Hotel.

Gil­lows also earned a rep­u­ta­tion for fur­nish­ing lux­u­ry yachts and ships, includ­ing the roy­al yacht Vic­to­ria and Albert, as well as the Lusi­ta­nia, Heliopo­lis, Cairo, and the RMS Queen Mary (1934) and Queen Eliz­a­beth (1946) for Cunard. Dur­ing World War I, the Lan­cast­er fac­to­ry was con­vert­ed to war pro­duc­tion, man­u­fac­tur­ing ammu­ni­tion box­es for the Navy and pro­pellers for De Hav­il­land DH9 air­craft. In World War II, the com­pa­ny pro­duced parts for glid­ers and Mos­qui­to air­craft, while the uphol­stery depart­ment made duf­fel bags, tents, and cam­ou­flage nets.

How­ev­er, the fir­m’s busi­ness steadi­ly declined, and the Lan­cast­er work­shops were closed on March 31, 1962. In 1980, War­ing & Gil­low merged with the fur­ni­ture mak­ers Maple & Co to form Maple, War­ing & Gil­low, which lat­er became part of the Allied Maples Group Ltd., which also includ­ed Allied Car­pets.
(From The Nation­al Archives, City of West­min­ster Archives Centre)

Friedrich Otto Schmidt, History: 

In 1858, Carl Friedrich Hein­rich Schmidt (June 29, 1824, Stral­sund – Octo­ber 22, 1894, See­walchen), who came from a Sax­on fam­i­ly of car­pen­ters that had been estab­lished in the Pruss­ian region since the 18^th cen­tu­ry, decid­ed to move to Vienna.

Schmidt, who com­plet­ed his com­mer­cial train­ing in Ham­burg and moved to Prague in 1850 to work at the wall­pa­per fac­to­ry ​“Robert & Bhd. Sieburg­er” (where he man­aged the Budapest branch from 1853 to 1857), saw, like many artists and crafts­men, the impe­r­i­al city of Vien­na — with its rapid urban growth and the con­struc­tion of the Ringstrasse — as a lucra­tive oppor­tu­ni­ty for pro­fes­sion­al self-real­iza­tion.

After ini­tial­ly found­ing the wall­pa­per busi­ness ​“F. Schmidt & Sugg” in 1859 togeth­er with Ger­hard Joseph Hubert Sugg (born Novem­ber 27, 1832, Cologne) at Bischof­gasse 637 (today Roten­turm­strasse 11) in Vienna’s 1^st dis­trict, Schmidt took over full own­er­ship of the com­pa­ny in 1872 and renamed it ​“Friedrich Otto Schmidt.“

The com­pa­ny expe­ri­enced sig­nif­i­cant com­mer­cial suc­cess with the entry of his eldest son, Otto Erd­mann Schmidt (Octo­ber 4, 1854, Budapest – March 16, 1895, Vien­na), and expand­ed into a ​“Tech­ni­cal Ate­lier for Inte­ri­or Dec­o­ra­tions,” offer­ing com­plete inte­ri­or designs includ­ing stuc­co dec­o­ra­tions and fire­places.
The firm became not only one of the most suc­cess­ful inte­ri­or dec­o­ra­tors in the sec­ond half of the 19^th cen­tu­ry but also active­ly par­tic­i­pat­ed in Arthur von Scala’s reform move­ment at Vienna’s Muse­um of Art and Indus­try, which aimed, fol­low­ing the Eng­lish mod­el, to improve the col­lab­o­ra­tion between art and crafts­man­ship and to break with the tra­di­tion of his­tori­cism.

Soon, Schmidt moved away from his­tori­cist imi­ta­tions of old­er forms and focused instead on the exact repli­ca­tion of his­tor­i­cal mod­els, from indi­vid­ual pieces of fur­ni­ture to com­plete inte­ri­ors. Schmidt’s pas­sion for con­tem­po­rary move­ments was also reflect­ed in his per­son­al life. In 1874, his vil­la Daheim in See­walchen, Upper Aus­tria, designed by archi­tect Zin­ner, was com­plet­ed. There, he main­tained friend­ships with artists, writ­ers, and musi­cians such as Hans Makart and Friedrich von Amer­ling. When Carl Friedrich Hein­rich Schmidt died in 1894 and his eldest son Otto passed away in 1895, his oth­er son, Max Her­mann Schmidt (August 11, 1861, Vien­na – April 1, 1935, Budapest), took over the com­pa­ny.

Max Her­mann had trained dur­ing the 1880s with the inte­ri­or design­er Prig­not in Paris and the fur­nish­ing com­pa­ny Pal­len­berg in Cologne.
He joined the fam­i­ly busi­ness in 1889 and became sole own­er in 1894. Togeth­er with his broth­ers Carl Leo (Feb­ru­ary 20, 1867, Vien­na – May 15, 1942, Vien­na) and Hugo Wil­helm (Feb­ru­ary 2, 1856, Budapest – Feb­ru­ary 16, 1932, Vien­na), he restruc­tured and expand­ed the ​“Tech­ni­cal Ate­lier for Inte­ri­or Fur­nish­ings” by the turn of the cen­tu­ry. In 1896, a sec­ond branch was opened at Waisen­haus­gasse 7 (today Boltz­man­ngasse) in Vienna’s 9^th dis­trict, along­side the store at Roten­turm­strasse 11.
In 1897, a shop was opened at Lipót körút 32 (today Szent István körút) in Budapest. In 1898, the com­pa­ny moved from Roten­turm­strasse into the baroque Palais Neu­pauer-Bre­uner at Singer­strasse 16 in Vienna’s 1^st dis­trict.

Pri­vate apart­ments and stor­age rooms were housed at Waisen­haus­gasse 7. In 1900 and 1910, fur­ther branch­es were opened at Bacher­gasse 5 in Vienna’s 5^th dis­trict and at Eisen­gasse 5 (today Wil­helm-Exn­er-Gasse) in Vienna’s 9^th dis­trict, though these were even­tu­al­ly closed over the years.
A par­tic­u­lar­ly pro­duc­tive col­lab­o­ra­tion devel­oped with the archi­tect Adolf Loos, who worked close­ly with Max Her­mann Schmidt and, for exam­ple, inspired the well-known ​“Ele­phant Trunk Table” (1899), which from 1900 onward appeared in var­i­ous ver­sions in numer­ous inte­ri­or projects.
In addi­tion to work­ing with Loos, the com­pa­ny also col­lab­o­rat­ed with the Vien­na Seces­sion. Fol­low­ing plans by Josef Hoff­mann, they fur­nished the entrance hall and sec­re­tary’s office in the Seces­sion exhi­bi­tion build­ing.

Since 1907, the Palais Chotek at Währinger­strasse 28 in Vienna’s 9^th dis­trict has served as the com­pa­ny head­quar­ters. The his­toric Renais­sance-style build­ing was first rent­ed as an ate­lier in col­lab­o­ra­tion with archi­tect Lothar Abel (Feb­ru­ary 15, 1841, Vien­na – June 24, 1896, Vien­na) and final­ly pur­chased in 1904. After Carl Leo’s death in 1942, his son Erich Schmidt (Feb­ru­ary 27, 1910, Vien­na – June 14, 1980, Vien­na) and his wife Irene, née Eder (July 13, 1910, Vien­na – June 21, 2001, Vien­na), took over the busi­ness.
From 1968, their daugh­ter Irene (born August 31, 1948, Vien­na) served as man­ag­ing direc­tor, while her hus­band Klaus Lorenz (May 23, 1943, Scheibbs – Decem­ber 24, 2016, Vien­na) was appoint­ed as autho­rized sig­na­to­ry.

Today, the com­pa­ny is run by Irene and her two chil­dren, Irene (born Feb­ru­ary 15, 1967, Vien­na) and Claus Lorenz (born March 15, 1966, Vien­na).
Claus Lorenz is also respon­si­ble for over­see­ing the Friedrich Otto Schmidt archives.

Lit­er­a­ture:
​“Wag­n­er, Hoff­mann, Loos und das Möbelde­sign der Wiener Mod­erne” (pp. 147 ff.) Artists, Patrons, Pro­duc­ers, Vol. 37, edit­ed by Eva B. Ottill­inger, Dr. Ste­fan Üner, M MD