Melbourne Club Antique Blackwood Hall Seat Settle
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Melbourne club: an antique Australian blackwood hall seat settle, Melbourne, Victorian origin, 19th century, 110 cm high, 145 cm long, 55 cm deep. [See also lot 146]. The Melbourne club is a private social club established at a gathering of 23 gentlemen on Saturday, 17 December 1838, and initially used John Pascoe Fawkner's hotel on the corner of Collins Street and market Street. The club moved to new purpose-built premises at the eastern end of Collins Street, designed by Leonard Terry in Renaissance revival style, in 1859. A dining room wing with a bay window was added at the western end in 1885, designed by Terry & Oakden. It includes, among other rooms, a library, main dining room, private dining room, breakfast room, billiard rooms, lawn room and bedrooms. The building is listed on the Victorian Heritage register. At the rear of the club building is a private courtyard garden, a rarity in Melbourne's central business district. It is also listed on the Victorian Heritage register, and is the location of garden parties and private functions. The garden contains the largest plane tree in Victoria, according to the National Trust's register of significant trees. Despite (or perhaps because) the Melbourne club continuing to insist on a 'Male only' membership policy, it has attracted many high profile members, including Governors general Sir Isaac Isaacs and Sir Ninian Stephen, chief Justice Sir Owen Dixon, Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser and artists, Arthur Streeton, William Dargie and Daryl Lindsay.
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- Blackwood - One of the best known and most widely used Australian timbers, blackwood (acacia melanoxylon), is a member of the Acacia (wattle) family and grows in eastern Australia from about Adelaide in South Australia, as far north as Cairns in Queensland.
The largest, straightest and tallest trees come from the wet forest and swamps of north-west Tasmania where it is grown commercially.
Blackwood timber colours range across a wide spectrum, from a very pale honey colour through to a dark chocolate with streaks of red tinge.
The hardwood timber has been commonly used in the production of furniture, flooring, and musical instruments in Australia from the late 19th century. However, the straight grain timber is not the most prized or valuable, that honour falls to blackwood with a wavy, fiddleback pattern, which is used both in the solid and as a veneer. Fiddleback was only used on the finest examples of furniture. - Victorian Period - The Victorian period of furniture and decorative arts design covers the reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1901. There was not one dominant style of furniture in the Victorian period. Designers used and modified many historical styles such as Gothic, Tudor, Elizabethan, English Rococo, Neoclassical and others, although use of some styles, such as English Rococo and Gothic tended to dominate the furniture manufacture of the period.
The Victorian period was preceded by the Regency and William IV periods, and followed by the Edwardian period, named for Edward VII (1841 ? 1910) who was King of the United Kingdom and the British Dominions and Emperor of India for the brief period from 1901 until his death in 1910.
This item has been included into following indexes:
- seating, benches and pews