The Coronation Chair currently stands all spruced up, following last year’s conservation, under a crimson canopy, by the west entrance to Westminster Abbey. The sovereign has used this throne during the actual ceremony almost continuously since the coronation of Henry IV (1399). The oldest dated piece of English furniture (1297-1300) made by a known artist (Walter of Durham) to survive has been given the comprehensive study it deserves by Warwick Rodwell, with supplementary chapters on its most recent conservation by Marie Louise Sauerberg and its current display by Ptolemy Dean.
Not only does the book cover the design, construction and decoration of the chair, but also the subsequent adaptations and mishandlings of both chair and stone, their hold on antiquarian and popular imagination, and all the political shenanigans of the 20th century.
The Coronation Chair was originally commissioned by Edward I to house the sacred stone, on which the Kings of Scotland had been crowned in the abbey of Scone, and placed in the Chapel of St Edward the Confessor in Westminster Abbey.
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