Walnut chair 456.1963

 

Designed by Peter Waals and made in his Chalford workshop

Walnut with ebony inlaid stringing and two chamfered ebony uprights in the back.

90.5 x 49 x 39cm, h. of seat 43.5cm

 

The chairs have drop-in leather seats. There are no corner blocks joining the chair legs and seat rails because Waals believed that the construction should be strong enough without.

Leicester Museum has Waals’s original receipt for the clients, the Misses Goddards, dated October 1930 which gives the cost of the four chairs as £32.10.0.

The Goddard family of Leicester were important local patrons of the arts. Joseph Goddard, a chemist developed Goddard's plate powder, a cleaning powder without mercury. He promoted the use of the powder by giving free samples to travellers (salesmen) who visited his shop. He was a Baptist like Thomas Cook and promoted temperance in the works and improving excursions – to, for example, the 1851 Great Exhibition – for the workforce. The family had close links with the Evans family following the marriage of W A Evans to Nancy, one of the four Goddard daughters, in 1904.

 

Presented by Mrs J B Hostie, née Barbara Goddard, one of the daughters of Joseph Goddard, in 1963

456 1963/1-4