Beatrix Potter: furnishing the imagination

From childhood, Beatrix Potter loved studying and sketching the old furnishings and oak-panelled rooms of the houses she visited. As her interest in furniture developed, so too did her yearning for independence:

'If I ever had a house I would have old furniture, oak in the dining room and Chippendale in the drawing room.'

Gwaenynog in Denbighshire, Wales

Gwaenynog was the home of one of Potter's uncles, Frederick Burton. He spent some of his large cotton fortune on collecting 18th-century mahogany furniture that would enhance the house's original oak furnishings. His 'perfect taste' inspired Potter's own passion for antiques, while the narrow passageways and oak-panelled rooms of Gwaenynog were among her favourite places to sketch and study furniture.

Potter produced several pencil and watercolour studies of her uncle's three-storey oak court cupboard and long-case clock at Gwaenynog. A similar clock, which she bought for the half-landing at Hill Top, was immortalised in her illustration of Tabitha Twitchit in The Tale of Samuel Whiskers.

Fawe Park in Cumbria

Welsh dressers are a distinctive feature of Potter's illustrations for The Tale of Mrs Tiggy-Winkle, The Tale of Pigling Bland, The Tailor of Gloucester and The Tale of Samuel Whiskers. Potter probably sketched a dresser (dated 1770–1790) at Fawe Park, a house the Potter family rented in the summer of 1903.

Beatrix studied furniture with the keen eye of an investigative scientist. She sketched a Chippendale-style chair (of circa 1760) and vase-splat chair (of circa 1720) at Fawe Park as she would an animal, studying them from every angle to highlight aspects of the design and construction.

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  Beatrix Potter, ‘Sketch of a court cupboard and long-case clock

  Beatrix Potter, ‘Sketch of a court cupboard and long-case clock, Gwaenynog’ © Frederick Warne & Co. 2006

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  Beatrix Potter, ‘Sketch of a chair and court cupboard’ © Frederick Warne & Co. 2006

  Beatrix Potter, ‘Sketch of a chair and court cupboard’ © Frederick Warne & Co. 2006

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  Beatrix Potter, ‘Sketch of a dresser

  Beatrix Potter, ‘Sketch of a dresser, Fawe Park (1903)’, © Frederick Warne & Co. 2006

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  Beatrix Potter, 'Studies of chairs

  Beatrix Potter, 'Studies of chairs, Fawe Park (1903)’ © Frederick Warne & Co. 2006

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  Beatrix Potter, ‘Sketch of a writing desk and mirror

  Beatrix Potter, ‘Sketch of a writing desk and mirror, Gwaenynog’ © Frederick Warne & Co. 2006

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  Beatrix Potter, 'Table and chair'© Frederick Warne & Co. 2006

  Beatrix Potter, 'Table and chair'© Frederick Warne & Co. 2006

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  Beatrix Potter, 'Tabitha on the stairway at Hill Top' © Frederick Warne & Co. 2006

  Beatrix Potter, 'Tabitha on the stairway at Hill Top' © Frederick Warne & Co. 2006

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  Beatrix Potter, 'Anna Maria running with plate'© Frederick Warne & Co. 2006

  Beatrix Potter, 'Anna Maria running with plate'© Frederick Warne & Co. 2006

Hill Top Farm in Sawrey, Cumbria

In 1905 Potter used royalties from the sale of her books to purchase Hill Top, a small 17th-century Lakeland farmhouse in Sawrey. Hill Top was never a permanent home. Instead, Potter furnished it in the manner of a museum, using family furniture from London and old oak furniture bought at local farm sales. She arranged each room as a stage on which to play out the stories in her imagination.

Potter condemned the growing trend among London furniture dealers to scour the regions for traditional oak furniture. She bought over a dozen oak court cupboards to put back into local farmhouses in the Sawrey area, including a cupboard dated to 1667 that she used in the kitchen at Hill Top.

The kitchen or 'firehouse' was the heart of a Lakeland farmhouse. Potter restored Hill Top's with an oak court cupboard, 'a pretty dresser and some old-fashioned chairs; and a warming pan that belonged to my great-grandmother.' The oak dresser and vase-splat chair in the firehouse provide an elegant backdrop to Potter's illustration of Anna Maria in The Tale of Samuel Whiskers.

Potter continued to take 'a great and useful pleasure in old oak' long after her retirement from writing and illustrating children's books. She dedicated her latter years to buying and restoring Lakeland farmhouses and furniture, and on her death in 1943 she left 14 farms and 20 houses to the National Trust.

Melford Hall in Suffolk

The stately rooms of Melford Hall in Suffolk inspired some of Potter's most exquisite furniture studies. Detailed and delicately drawn, they include a sketch of a bobbin-turned armchair with projecting wings, of about 1660–70, and the Adam-style pole firescreen of about 1790.