Chair Amie

Here, for your viewing pleasure, may I present Pocock’s Reclining Patent Chair, from the March 1813 issue of Ackermann’s Repository:

Isn’t it a beauty?

The accompanying text reads: Our engraving this month represents an elegant fashionable fauteuil chair, upon Messrs. Pocock’s patent reclining principle, to incline the back to any position, with double reclining footstools, which slide from under the chair to extend it when the back is reclined to the length of a couch. A reading-desk is attached to the side, and contrived to swing round in front of the chair. The whole is designed with classical taste, in the present improved fashion of modern furniture, by the ingenious inventors, Messrs. Pocock’s, of Southampton-street, Covent-Garden.

I did a little research, and it seems that the Pocock company specialized in furniture for invalids. But in this case they put their know-how into a more mainstream piece of furniture…and oh, what a piece!

The foot rest is retractable, probably tied in to the mechanism that reclines the back, so that the chair doesn’t necessarily take up all that much space…but the ornamentation! Those winged, pot-bellied lions in front are adorable.

And the swiveling reading lectern is wonderful if a tad precarious-looking, perched as it is on the serpent’s coils. I wonder if any of these were actually built and sold by Messrs. Pocock?

Well, I totally know what I want for Christmas this year. How about you?