Set of four antique ox-head or shovel chairs

Dimensions:
H × W × D: 89 x 44 x 45 cm, or: 85 x 44 x 45 cm, seat height: 50 cm.

Description:
Set of four antique chairs made of solid birch wood. The four chairs are available in two sizes, but are identical in their basic shape.

The front legs, into which the frames are mortised, are unusually curved. These in turn are mortised into the slightly flared rear legs, which continue upwards as an artistically designed backrest. The upper end of the backrest is formed by the ox-head shaped backboard - named after its shape on the outside with ox horns pointing downwards.

Below the backrest board is the decorative scrollwork with a blackened fan and a stylised, bound bouquet of foliage above it.

The chairs have been reupholstered and covered with a narrow strip from the JAB collection.

Worth knowing:
The design of the ox-head chairs developed in Munich and Vienna in the early 19th century and resulted from the inverted shape of an Amazon shield. The chair shape is also known as a "shovel chair" in reference to the antlers of the fallow deer known as a "shovel".
The design soon spread from the court to bourgeois households and found its way from Austria and southern Germany up to northern Germany and finally to Scandinavia, where these chairs originate from and which are dated to around 1840-50.

Condition:
Good, stable and restored condition. The surface cleaned and polished with shellac. Conserved signs of use commensurate with age.

Price: € 3200 for the set of four.

The strongly convex legs, the use of solid birch wood and the carved decoration on the backrest are characteristic of Swedish chairmaking at the time. A very similar pair, signed by Anders Jonsson from Lindome, was made and signed in the 1830s.