THOMAS GNOMEMAN WHITTAKER YORKSHIRE OAK DINING SUITE

A fully Adzed Oak Dining Table with 6 Adzed Panel Back Dining Chairs including 2 Carvers all with wonderful carved gnome signatures

The Oak Dining Table with a 3 plank adzed and dowelled oak top raised on a trestle base with carved waisted end supports recessed carved gnome signature to one end

Excellent patina and fully adzed to all visible areas

Height 29 ½ (74.5 cm) Width 30 (76 cm)
Length 66 (168 cm)

The chairs with original hide seats with fully adzed panel backs above a stretched hide seat standing on four shaped legs connected by stretchers each with a carved Gnome signature to leg

Circa: 1960

Condition: The suite has a good rich vintage colour with minor wear in line with age. One carver has a slightly darker hide seat and may have been a later replacement or was less used

Price SOLD
Biography: Tom Whittaker circa 1910-1991 lived and worked in Littlebeck near Whitby after studying in his native York and with craftsmen in Germany and Switzerland.
He used only English Oak and his trademark was to carve a little woodland gnome into each and every piece of furniture he made. Legend has it that a gnome is born every time an acorn sprouts and then that gnome will guard that tree throughout its life
Tom Whittaker the Gnome Man of Littlebecks work is highly recognised his Vulnerata statue of the wounded Virgin commissioned by the monastery of Valladolid replaced a figure defaced by Elizabethan sailors during a piratical raid is one of his noted works.
Tom Whittaker died in 1991 his business ended and his workshop was converted into a private house
Of all the Woodcarvers and furniture makers of North Yorkshire the Gnome mans work is highly sought after.
See also http://www.britishpathe.com/video/gnome-man/