South African Design, Past & Present
Timed Online Auction, 7 - 26 June 2024
Furniture and Metalware
Lot Estimate
ZAR 12 000 - 15 000
Selling Price
Incl. Buyer's Premium & VAT
Incl. Buyer's Premium & VAT
ZAR 14 070
About this Item
Cape Regency stinkwood rusbank, Siegruhn, Eastern Cape, 19th century
the wave-shaped top-rail centred by a stylised shell above a decorative centre splat, flanked by turned spindles, downcurved scroll arm supports, riempie seat, raised on square-section tapering legs joined by a three-quarter box-stretcher
1
189cm long
Notes
Siegruhn came out from Germany in 1818 and worked in the Eastern Cape area. His benches, with their very specific design vocabulary of shells and volutes or breaking wave motifs on the back rail make them very recognizable and they are know as the 'Eastern Cape benches' . What makes these benches very special and collectable is the fact that they are of exceptional quality but also that Siegruhn was one of the very few furniture makers that marked his pieces.
The tapering neo-classical legs point to the fact that this specific bench is an earlier example. Story has it that it was buried during the Boer War in the Stormberge in order to save it from the English.