Triangular Chairs at Strawberry Hill: The Genuine and The Fabricated

Abstract

First paragraph: Walpole’s interest in Gothic design continued beyond the style’s by-then-diminishing, though not entirely side-lined, popularity in mainstream fashionable furniture. He used antiquarian prints as the basis for Strawberry Hill’s architectural components; Wenceslaus Hollar’s depiction of the screen at Old St Paul’s, London, was instrumental in the design of the Library’s presses. This method — copying and recreating elements or whole architecture schemes — enabled Walpole to reproduce architecture that he and his friends in the Strawberry Committee had not seen first-hand, or which no longer existed (such as Old St Paul’s). Harnessing engravings of medieval architecture consequently allowed Walpole and his circle to overcome the ‘general disuse of Gothic architecture, and the decay and alterations so frequently made in churches’.