Important Arts & Crafts Cupboard By C.F.A. Voysey

Projecting architectural mouldings, raised on ball feet

2 shelves within and a brass heart shaped escutcheon

Oak

This design is Illustrated and held in the collection of The RIBA

Designed by Charles Francis Annesley Voysey (own use)

Possibly for his house, The Orchard, Chorley Wood.

Circa 1904

Voysey shows a great deal of restraint in this design, this is possibly due to the piece being for his own use. Its strengths coming from proportion and balance and true to his intentions of ‘sense of proportion and puritanical love of simplicity’. Voysey advocated that pieces should be devoid of any finish and left “clean to the plane”. The colour has naturally darkened over the 120 years with the original colour being the inside of the door.

You can only imagine how this piece would have been viewed by the critics in 1904, at the time of the great excesses of the Victorians.

Voysey pieces rarely come to the market and even scarcer are items he had made for himself, such as this cupboard.