A rare Henry VIII joined oak wall or fixed settle, North Devon, circa 1520


The back of eight linenfold-carved panels, each rendered with folded linen, the drapes carved and punched-decorated at the top and straight-cut at the base, framed by moulded rails, with three carved and two plain 'crocketed'-finials, all spaced by slot-in run-moulded crestings, the separate boarded bench formed from heavy timbers, with three in-curved 'slab' supports, 243cm wide x 31cm deep x 160cm high, (95 1/2in wide x 12in deep x 62 1/2in high)
|Provenance:Reputedly from the Old Manor House, Brightleigh, North Devon. The Michael Dunn Collection.Illustrated:M. Dunn, The English Smile (2005), pp. 69-74.Michael Dunn refers to this wall settle as reputedly from the same house as the screen fragment in the collections of the V & A, ibid., p. 73. This late 15th/early 16th century screen [museum no. W.1-1946] came from the Old Manor House, Brightleigh, a former home to a branch of the family of Giffard. The screen is discussed and illustrated in C. Tracy, English Medieval Furniture and Woodwork (1988), p. 161, pl. 266.For a comparable wall settle, from Orchard Farm, Monkleigh, Bideford, Devon, see the V & A collection, [no. W.25:1-1923]. A part settle-back, reputedly from a farmhouse in Taunton, Somerset, also forms part of the museum's collection [no.539 to B-1892] and is illustrated in Murray Adams-Acton, Domestic Architecture and Old Furniture (1929), fig. 12. See also Victor Chinnery Oak Furniture: The British Tradition (2016), pp. 190-195, for a series of related settles from Devon and Somerset, dating to circa 1500 - 1550, figs. 3:6-3:10. Many of these settles were discovered during the twentieth century as fixtures in inns and farmhouses. They sharethe same basic proportions and arrangement, and all have linenfold panels and horizontal carved crest panels slotted between the finials.For a discussion on the development of 'linenfold', see ibid, pp. 378 - 381, where it is noted that earlier linenfold panelling tended to simulate curtains or hangings with folded top edges but straight bottoms, whereas later renderings were more stylised, with both edges of the panel carved with folds.