Dutch Colonial Javanese Armchairs, Carved Teak and Cane (Pair)

Java's carving town is Jepara, on the north coast, and by the end of the nineteenth century it was turning out furniture in European shapes made by Javanese hands, solid teak, open arms, backs and seats set with rattan woven so tightly it behaves like cloth. The trade that carried that work to Europe owes a good deal to Raden Ajeng Kartini, the Jepara regent's daughter, who from 1896 was permitted out of seclusion to visit the carvers' village, who wrote an essay in 1903 titled From a Forgotten Little Corner to argue for the industry, and who worked with a Dutch association to put Jepara carving in front of European buyers. She was dead by 1904, at twenty-five.

These two are that type, and the thing to look at is the caning. A sunburst woven by hand, panel by panel, through holes drilled one at a time, is days of work for a single chair, and it is the part no reproduction ever bothers to fake. After a century both are still tight, which is rarer than the carving and worth more. The carving was the harder-won half. Teak outlasts a tropical century because of its oils and its silica, and the silica is the same mineral that blunts every chisel that touches it.

Specifications

• Java, Dutch East Indies, late 19th to early 20th century
• Unmarked; Dutch Colonial Javanese, maker unknown, attribution open
• Carved teak; pierce-carved foliate apron, and a pierced crest carved on both faces
• Hand-caned through individually drilled holes with a couched binder; the back a sunburst radiating from a carved rosette, the seat a plain hexagonal weave
• Turned arm terminals with carved floral rosettes to the end faces; carved and turned legs on compressed rounded feet; pegged seat rails
• 84 cm high, 60 cm wide, 65 cm deep
• Sold as a pair, with removable cushions; usable without them
• Cleaned and waxed
• Honest age: structurally sound and sturdy throughout, cane intact and tight on both, wear and patina consistent with age