Unusual Irish Carved Oak Armchair
the splat with a portrait of the famously granite-faced Sir Edward Carson, shown in profile holding spectacles and with a shamrock in his lapel, the arm terminals in the form of hands, with vitruvian scroll seat-rail and tapering legs.
Edward Henry Carson, Baron Carson (1854-1935), was an Irish Unionist politician, barrister and judge and leader of the Ulster Unionist Council in Belfast. He was retained by the Marquess of Queensberry to defend him in the libel case brought by Oscar Wilde. His masterful cross-examination of Wilde was generally acknowledged to have caused Wilde to lose the case, go to prison, and write The Ballad of Reading Gaol. After the case, Carson tried to intercede, unsuccessfully, on Wilde’s behalf, to mitigate the punishment to be meted out to him.
