Dug-out Seat, Scandinavia

Artist unkown

1800-1900

Birch

Height: 78 cm

This type of seat was known, for obvious reasons, as a ‘tree-trunk’ chair. Chairs carved from single pieces of wood were a common type of furniture making before the arrival of mass-production. The designers were often limited to common types of wood such as oak, elm or, in this case, birch. Nevertheless their talents enabled them to create innovative and highly personalised types of furniture, where the end product has an irregular yet sturdy form.

This particular piece of furniture is ascribed as ‘Scandinavian’, as little 19th-century timber folk furniture from Britain has survived. Unlike most other examples of furniture displayed here, this piece is painted – as was the case with many examples of Scandinavian and German folk furniture.