Arts & Crafts Carved Oak Hall Stand, 1870

Details

Description

An exceedingly charming, interesting and rare Victorian carved oak hallway hat stand in good antique condition. Made in Britain around … Read more An exceedingly charming, interesting and rare Victorian carved oak hallway hat stand in good antique condition. Made in Britain around 1870, this strikingly characterful Arts & Crafts piece will add distinctive practicality, rustic decorative appeal and a super aesthetic of authentic bygone craftsmanship to any interior.

Impressively sized and handcrafted from solid oak, this hallway stand has a very particular and quite unusual, genre-blurring design. Its Arts & Crafts heritage combines High Victorian design, seen in the fretwork lower section, with more Provincial and Primitive Olde Worlde styles, seen in the intricate handmade decorative carvings, which are evocative of Ancient Norse trees, Celtic carvings and Native American totem designs.

Crafted in the shape of a primitive tree, the central column or trunk displays an original and convenient portrait mirror and ‘sprouts’ three horizontal rows of arms or branches, each containing hand-turned protruding pegs – eight pegs in total with a matching decoration to the crown. Being made in late-Victorian England when most people wore hats daily and given the substantial size of the pegs and their less sturdy fixings, this super stand would have been intended as a hat and stick stand rather than a coat stand.

At waist-height there is a handy lidded compartment for keys and paraphernalia with affixed brass hoops for umbrella and stick storage to the sides. Opening the lidded compartment reveals the original maker’s stamp to the righthand side. The lower section is decorated with impressive fretwork carvings to the front and sides of the trunk, with notched foliage carvings to the edges to match the upper sections. It is completed a the pair of original, green-painted square metal drip trays and the stand is set on four small foot stumps.

All in all this is a very charming and interesting hallway stand, which will add bygone decorative charm and practicality to any setting.

CONDITION
This is in good antique condition. Impressively sized, reassuringly heavy and structurally sound, it has to-be-expected wear and ageing associated with its more than 150-year age. The mirror has some foxing and age-related marks and the peg fixings look to have had historic restorations. To preserve its integrity, we would recommend that only hats or very light jackets are hung from the pegs. All in all this is a wonderful and rare hallway stand in good antique condition and if well looked after it should look just as impressive for generations to come – please see the photos.

MEASUREMENTS
Height - 203cm, Width - 77cm, Depth - 32cm, Weight - 17kg. See less