This chair was said to have been given by Edward Burne-Jones (1833-98) to his studio assistant T.M. Rooke following the birth of his son Noel (1881-1953). The elder Rooke met Burne-Jones through Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co. (1861-75), which the former joined in 1869; thereafter Rooke remained closely associated with Burne-Jones until his death. The younger Rooke became a well-known wood-engraver, illustrator and teacher. The chair was acquired from Noel Rooke’s widow, Celia Mary [Molly] (1902-98), also a wood-engraver and painter. The details of provenance, which seem very plausible, were given verbally by Mrs Rooke.

The attribution of the design to Benson is strengthened by the green-stained two-seater settee also acquired from the Rooke collection (see Barnet and Wilkinson, op. cit., no. 19. Benson himself owned an identical settee, recorded in a photograph of his studio in Camden Hill Road, London (see Ian Hamerton, ed., W.A.S. Benson: Arts and Crafts Luminary and Pioneer of Modern Design, Woodbridge, 2005, pl. 29). Benson also owned an armchair that is clearly by the same designer as the child’s chair (see Hammerton, op. cit., pl. 37). In 1883 Benson published another armchair that relates in design to the Rooke chair (see Notes on Some of the Minor Arts, London, 1883, pl. II), and was certainly involved with Morris & Co. by 1884, but perhaps earlier (see Hamerton, op. cit., pp. 155-56). A ‘Settee or Window Seat’ from a ‘Design of Mr. W.A.S. Benson’ is illustrated in a Morris & Co. trade catalogue dating from circa 1910; the form suggests the same hand as the present chair, notably in the shape of the spindles and the incising of the seat rail (see Hamerton, op. cit., pl. 158 (centre right).