Please be seated for the arrival of a special new chair at Orkney Museum!

A new donation of a David M. Kirkness-made Orkney chair to the Orkney Museum has caused great excitement among the curators and staff there.

Mr Kirkness, from Westray, who was born in 1854 and died in 1936, set up a workshop in Kirkwall and started making Orkney chairs.

By the late 19th century the straw-backed Orkney chair was unfashionable and the skill of making them was dying out. Mr Kirkness found skilled workers in Papa Westray and Deerness who could make the straw backs, while he made the wooden frame and woven bent-grass seats. While the museum has a collection of early Orkney chairs and examples by Reynald Eunson, who bought Kirkness's business in the 1950s and used his templates to make chairs, they didn't have an original Kirkness chair, until now. But what makes this chair so important is not just the maker, but the wood used in its creation.

The donor, Janice Thomson of Tranent, East Lothian, contacted the Orkney Museum with the highly generous offer.

She said:"A number of years ago we inherited an Orkney chair by D. M. Kirkness. Under the chair is an inscription which indicates that the chair was made by D. M. Kirkness in 1901, from the oak couples from St Magnus Cathedral, between 1540 and 1558. The chair was given to my mother-in-law after the death of her friend, Robina (Bina) Gunn, who used to stay in the Clay Loan, Kirkwall. We then inherited it when my mother-in-law died. We've had it for some time now but feel that it should be returned to Orkney as we have no family to leave it to."

Social History Curator, Ellen Pesci, explains its significance to the museum's collection.

"Without a single example in the Orkney Museum of a D. M. Kirkness chair, they have almost become the stuff of legend, given that the chair I have often referred to until now is kept on display 700 miles away in the Victoria & Albert museum in London! I always felt quite sad that we couldn't champion his work in his native Orkney, especially given how it was thanks to him that the status of these beautifully crafted chairs was elevated from the vernacular to commercially desirable furniture back in 1890, a status still upheld by local makers today.

"To be offered not only an original D M Kirkness chair is wonderful, but for it to have been crafted from the oak used in the extension of St Magnus Cathedral by Bishop Reid in the mid 1500s, a time when the buildings which later became Tankerness House were still serving as Catholic manses for the clergy of the cathedral, is a perfectly fabulous connection to the museum. I am so grateful to Janice and her family for deciding to offer us this chair. It will be cherished in our collection and will become a much admired artefact in the museum."

The D. M. Kirkness Orkney chair is currently on display in the Baikie Library room of the Orkney Museum, Tankerness House, Kirkwall. Admission to the museum is free.

Pictured below is the inscription on newly acquired Orkney Chair.