C. R. Ashbee's centre table, 1898
Designed by Charles Robert Ashbee (1863-1942)
Made by the Guild of Handicraft, London
Provenance -
Mr & Mrs Ashbee, 74 Cheyne Walk, London, from c.1898
Jane Felicity Ashbee (1913-2008), 22 Courtnell Street, Bayswater,
On loan to The Wilson Museum, Cheltenham, from 2008 to about 2014
Sold by descendants at Bonhams, London, 23rd October 2024, lot 13
UK antique furniture trade
Oak with parcel-gilding
76cm high
103.5cm wide
102cm deep
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Numbers 72 to 75 Cheyne Walk, London, were a group of houses designed in 1897 by Charles Robert Ashbee and built by 1898, to include No 74 as a home for himself and his new wife Janet Elizabeth Ashbee, née Forbes (1877-1961). This table was located in the lobby, between the main entrance and his studio/music room. See the street elevation and floor plan (RIBA PB246/9(1) and RIBA PB243/17).
The table was first seen publicly when a watercolour was published in Kunst und Kunsthandwerk, monthly issue IV, volume 11, 1901. The watercolour was published again, in colour, in Moderne Bauformen Vol 2 1903. A group of interior photographs to include two of Ashbee's studio/music room, showing this table more clearly, was published in the The Building News 13th June 1902 and then re-used in the Guild of Handicraft's catalogue of c.1906 (National Art Library TC.C.0108).
This suite of rooms lent itself to being used as a small theatre for amateur dramatics, including the Guild's production of The New Inn in January 1902. Ashbee can be seen on the far left, perched on a hand rail (King’s College, Cambridge, Archive CRA/12/32,33). Theatrical use was not limited to the Guild of Handicraft: the Art Workers' Guild also used it for rehearsals of their performance of Beauty's awakening, a masque of winter and of spring, a play they ultimately performed in the Guildhall, London, in June 1899. From May Morris to Walter Crane, the cast was a who's who of the Arts and Crafts Movement. See page 41 of Felicity Ashbee's biography of her mother Janet Ashbee, Love, Marriage and the Arts & Crafts Movement, Syracuse University Press, 2002, for her account of the rehearsals in her music room.
A photograph taken in the early 1980's as a proposed image for Alan Crawford's book C.R. Ashbee: Architect, Designer and Romantic Socialist (published 1985) shows this table and other items in Felicity Ashbee's possession; it was not, however, published in the book (King's College, Cambridge, Archive CRA/12/32,33).
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A similar example was supplied to a client c.1900 and a sketch of a comparable card table was illustrated in The Studio in 1898 and then again in a Guild catalogue c.1900.
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In 1902 the Ashbees left London and moved to Chipping Campden, where they rented the 15th century Woolstaplers' Hall. Their first tenant at 74 Cheyne Walk was a frail James McNeill Whistler. Having until then been living in various hotels, he took a two-year lease and moved in within weeks. Owing to ill-health, he only used the basement studio and slept in the lobby to be near to his work and to avoid unnecessary stairs. Further tenants included Laurence Olivier for just a handful of weeks in the middle of 1933. The house then sat empty until late 1940 when Janet and Felicity met up to check it, presumably also when they collected items to use themselves, sadly a couple of months later it was destroyed by a German parachute mine.
It seems clear that the Ashbees rented out 74 Cheyne Walk fully-furnished. We know they didn't take their self-designed furniture from the studio and lobby with them to Chipping Campden as they completely furnished Woolstaplers' Hall with 'country' furniture. See the photographic archive at King's College, Cambridge for interior views. We know the cost of suing John Ruskin for libel in 1877 (the Ruskin trail) , together with huge debts from building his own home (The White House, Tite Street, Chelsea) that Whistler filed for bankruptcy in 1879 and so by 1902 was living in hotels and had few of his own furnishings. His friends and authorised biographers Joseph and Elizabeth Pennell described the studio as 'bare with little furniture’, much as it had been when the Ashbees lived there and probably more in keeping with an Arts and Crafts idiom than the Aesthetic one that the Pennells might have expected of their friend. The Pennells also described how Whistler would rest his head on a table for a nap following supper. On 17th July 1903 Whistler died in his bed in the lobby of 74 Cheyne Walk. See pages 419 to 432 of The Life of James McNeill Whistler by E. R. and J. Pennell, 5th edition, 1911. In addition, one of the Ashbee's subsequent tenants, Laurence Olivier, only stayed for a month or two, which would necessitate the property being furnished.
Accordingly, our table would have been in the room in which Whistler died and might even have acted as a coffin-stand. See the Library of Congress collection control no. 2007675418, for a (flipped) photograph of the beginning of Whistler's funeral procession, where the front door of Number 74 can be seen tantalisingly open.
We wish to acknowledge Daniel E. Sutherland from the University of Arkansas for his help with this Whistler research.
