Charles Francis Annesley Voysey was educated at Dulwich College and was a prolific architect-designer within the Arts and Crafts movement. An undistinguished academic at college, Voysey later claimed he became an architect because it was 'the only profession for which one did not need to pass any examinations'. Beginning his career in 1881, he first established himself as a designer of furniture, textiles and wallpapers. Winning his first building commissions in 1890, he then cemented a reputation as a master of artistic cottages and modern country houses.
Voysey paid meticulous attention to detail, designing every aspect of a project, down to the door hinges. Voysey regularly exhibited watercolour elevations of his building projects, furniture and decorative designs at the Royal Academy, and is celebrated today as one of the leading British designers of the turn of the 20th century.
The simple design, personified by a heart motif on the back of a chair, is one of Voysey’s best known furniture designs. F C Nielsen, who made other furniture that Voysey designed, made these chairs from 1902, in differing proportions. One signature detail of his work is the dovetail construction fixing the splat to the frame. Versions of this chair can be seen in major private collections and public institutions around the world with leather and rush drop-in seats.
Voysey had a limited number of designs that he returned to, but in many of his schemes for interiors, this model appears often - his mantra was for furniture with a ‘sense of proportion and puritanical love of simplicity’.
