Early Victorian Painted Hall Bench

An imposing early Victorian painted hall bench in the manner of Richard Bridgens, the low Gothic shaped back over a plain seat with simple apron centred by a small carved roundel, flanked by high scrolling splayed open arms, raised on bold shaped legs applied with conforming roundels in the ‘Jacobethan’ style.
Many of Richard Bridgens’s furniture designs are represented in his book ‘Furniture with Cadelabra and Interior Decoration (1838)’. Bridgens’s earlier designs were often made by the Liverpool Cabinetmaker George Bullock. He and Bridgens were the leading pre-Victorian pioneers of the Gothic revival. Extracts taken from Victorian and Edwardian Furniture and Interiors by Jeremy Cooper