A Dutch colonial stained satinwood and hardwood 'burgomaster' chair

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East India Decorations How we envisage our ancestors can, in many ways, be dependant upon what they have left behind in the way of furniture, decorations, pictures, utensils. anything that can illustrate to us how they lived their lives and what they chose to surround themselves with. During the period of the V.O.C. (Dutch East India Company - 1602-1795), the Dutch traders in Batavia left little in the way of written documentation - but we know that they were a very diverse group - from wealthy, well-educated members of socially prominent Dutch families, to the illiterate and and working classes. These 'traders' migrated to cities such as Jakarta and Colombo, which were then comparable in size to small Dutch towns of the 17th and 18th centuries. Inter-racial marriage was common between the Dutch and Euro-Asians and by the end of the 18th century, almost all the Dutch living there were part Asian. Inventories that had been drawn up by notaries during the entire V.O.C. period have been saved in Jakarta. From these we learn that many wealthy families had considerable amounts of furniture, gold, silver, jewellery and precious textiles, much more so than was customary in Holland. These families also possessed objects from the country in which they lived as well as from the surrounding countries with which they traded. In order to trade successfully they needed to know what the current fashions were in Holland and Europe and they bought goods using their knowledge of materials and feeling for aesthetic quality. However, for their own homes they chose forms and decorations which satisfied their own tastes, and thus developed an art form that was influenced by both eastern and western styles, and which had its own unique identity. This furniture and silver was not meant for export, but sadly, owing to the serious economic recession at the beginning of the 19th century, gold and silver was almost all melted down and even furniture with silver mounts was not spared. From the 1960s onwards, the Rijksmuseum collected a number of pieces of furniture were collected of exceptional quality and condition. This was the same furniture with which our ancestors in Indonesia had surrounded themselves in the 17th and 18th centuries. The Gemeentemuseum in The Hague possesses a large collection of ebony furniture dating from 1650-1720, which at the end of the 19th century had been brought together by Mrs. Gijbland Oosterhoff-Neijs. An exhibition of this furniture will be held in October 2002. It is exceptional in that it is the first time a large amount of Cape furniture will be shown in the Netherlands. It was not only the Dutch in Indonesia and Sri Lanka who possessed a lot of Asian art. In the Netherlands in many wealthy interiors, such as the royal House of Orange, much Asian art and arts and crafts was seen as well as Chinese and Japanese porcelain. It was said once that the beautiful houses of the wealthy merchants were decorated not only with costly paintings but also with 'East India Decorations'. Even now, in many Dutch houses you will still find Asian objects, and the homes of Dutch people living abroad will often be recognised by their Eastern artefacts. An interior without 'East India Decorations' can therefore not be a Dutch interior. Literature: Living on the Cape and in Batavia 1602-1795, exhibition in the Gemeentemuseum, The Hague (commences October 2002) Elaborate catalogues in Dutch and English will appear at the same time. Drs J. Veenendaal

A Dutch colonial stained satinwood and hardwood 'burgomaster' chair

SRI LANKA, SECOND HALF 18TH CENTURY

Details

A Dutch colonial stained satinwood and hardwood 'burgomaster' chair
Sri Lanka, second half 18th Century
Of typical form, the semi-circular back with waved toprail, ring-turned supports and pierced oval floral medallions above waved horizontal splats, above a caned circular seat, on six cabriole legs headed by acanthus and joined by ring-turned stretchers, on claw feet, with typed paper label Pollok House/on loan/property of D.M.M. and inscribed in white with inventory number E82 - 1977, top rim replaced

Provenance

Sir John Sterling Maxwell, Pollok House, Glasgow.
Thence by descent to D. Maxwell McDonald.
Anonymous sale, Christie's Glasgow, 9 March 1984, lot 87.
Anonymous sale, Christie's New York, 19 October 2000, lot 126.

Exhibited

Glasgow, Pollok House, on public exhibition from 1966 until 1984.

Special notice

Christie's charges a Buyer's premium calculated at 23.205% of the hammer price for each lot with a value up to €110,000. If the hammer price of a lot exceeds €110,000 then the premium for the lot is calculated at 23.205% of the first €110,000 plus 11.9% of any amount in excess of €110,000. Buyer's Premium is calculated on this basis for each lot individually.

Lot Essay

Burgomaster chairs are amongst the best known and highly prized seat furniture to have been made during the V.O.C. period. Dutchmen moving from Colombo (Sri Lanka) to Batavia often took these chairs along with them. When the English took over the governance of Sri Lanka during the French occupation of the Netherlands, most of the Dutch Burghers remained. During this "Interregnum" the Dutch sold many of these chairs to Englishmen. This is why many of these chairs became part of the inventory of wealthy English households, notably of those in Grimsthorpe, Lincolnshire (an example is shown in the Entrance Hall in C. Latham, In English Homes, vol. I, London, 1909, p. 59), Kingston Lacy, Dorset (illustrated op.cit, p. 341), and Lyme Park, Cheshire (P. Macquoid and R. Edwards, The Dictionary of English Furniture, vol. I, London, 1924, p. 229, fig. 75).
This example was part of the Maxwell family collection at Pollok House, Glasgow, a property owned by the family for over 700 years. It was on public display from 1966 when Anne Maxwell MacDonald presented the house to the City of Glasgow. The house is now managed by the National trust for Scotland.
A virtually identical chair is illustrated in J. Veenendaal, Furniture from Indonesia Sri Lanka and India, Delft, 1985, pl. 128. For comparative literature see A. Jaffer, Furniture from British India and Ceylon, London, 2001, pp. 195-197. J. Terwen-de Loos, Het Nederlandse koloniale barokmeubel, Franeker, 1985, pp. 61-65.
J. Veenendaal, Furniture from Indonesia, Sri Lanka and India, Delft, 1985, pp. 109-111.

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