The Zodiac settle is a piece of painted furniture designed by the English architect and designer William Burges and made between 1869 and 1871. A wooden settle designed with Zodiac themes, it was made for Burges' rooms at Buckingham Street, and later moved to the drawing room of The Tower House, the home that he designed for himself in Holland Park. Burges desired to fill his home with furniture "covered with paintings, both ornaments and subjects; it not only did its duty as furniture, but spoke and told a story." At one stage the poet John Betjeman gave the settle to the novelist Evelyn Waugh, and it is now in the collection of The Higgins Art Gallery & Museum in Bedford.
Zodiac settle
William Burges was an English architect and designer. Among the greatest of the Victorian art-architects, he sought in his work to escape from both nineteenth-century industrialisation and the Neoclassical architectural style and re-establish the architectural and social values of a utopian medieval England. Burges stands within the tradition of the Gothic Revival, his works echoing those of the Pre-Raphaelites and heralding those of the Arts and Crafts movement.
William Burges
Burdett House, 15–16 Buckingham Street, to the right of the York Water Gate. Burges had his home/studio in a building on the site of No.15.
All Saints Church, Fleet, in Hampshire, before an arson attack in 2015
Maison Dieu, Dover