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Concept
Coronation Chair
Summary
The Coronation Chair, also known as St Edward's Chair or King Edward's Chair, is an ancient wooden chair on which British monarchs sit when they are invested with regalia and crowned at their coronations. It was commissioned in 1296 by King Edward I to contain the coronation stone of Scotland—known as the Stone of Destiny—which had been captured from the Scots. The chair was named after Edward the Confessor and was kept in his shrine at Westminster Abbey.
In 1296, the English king Edward I seized a block of sandstone from Scone Abbey in Perthshire called the Stone of Scone, or the Stone of Destiny. This stone had been used by Scottish kings for centuries to sit upon when they were crowned. Edward brought the Stone to England and commissioned the Coronation Chair to hold it. The high-backed, Gothic-style armchair was carved from oak at some point between the summer of 1297 and March 1300 by the carpenter Walter of Durham. At first, the king ordered the chair to be made of bronze, but he changed his mind and decided it should be made of timber. It was originally covered in gilding and coloured glass, much of which has now been lost. The chair is the oldest dated piece of English furniture made by a known artist. Although it was not originally intended to be a coronation chair, it began to be associated with coronations of English monarchs at some point in the 14th century, and the first coronation where it was definitely used was that of Henry IV in 1399. Monarchs used to sit on the Stone of Scone itself until a wooden platform was added to the chair in the 17th century.
When William III and Mary II became joint monarchs in 1689, they required two coronation chairs for the ceremony. William III used the original 13th-century chair, while a second chair was made for Mary II, which still resides in the abbey's collections.
Gilded lions added in the 16th century form the legs to the chair; they were all replaced in 1727. One of the four lions was given a new head for the coronation of George IV in 1821.
Official source
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