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Hidden Histories Tour - A Seat of Merchant Power: A Seventeenth-Century Walnut and Cane Chair of the Cann Family, Bristol

Date 7th Apr 2025 12.30pm - 1.00pm Price Free All ages Location The Burrell Collection View map

By the seventeenth century, Bristol became a leading port for the transatlantic slave trade with wealthy merchants such as the Cann family profiting on the rapid British colonisation of the Caribbean. A seventeenth century walnut and cane chair, carved with the Cann coat of arms, stands as an example of the luxurious commodities European plantation owners commissioned to decorate their homes.

Find out more about the Cann family and their links to the transatlantic slave trade, with Laura Bauld, Decorative Arts curator, Laura Bauld, in this short, gallery talk.

Image: "Chair carved with the coat of arms of the Cann family of Bristol, inscribed with the date 1699.

Glasgow Museums, Burrell Collection, 14.159