Big arms

Looking at the arms of the chair, van Wees mentions that: “The armrests are a bit ‘stiff’, other English designs at the time had a much nicer bend, they have a bit of schwung.”

The arms of the chairs are very peculiar. Why were these armrests chosen? An answer might be found in popular women's clothing at the time. Before Napoleon, the standard dresses were quite wide, in sharp contrast to contemporary fashion trends. The dresses that were popular in Van Braam Houckgeest’s era could easily fit in the wide armrests of this chair. Whether this was a conscious decision by Van Braam Houckgeest, we do not know.