Re: Local History of the Chair
Even though much of my business is now leather furniture, my store was founded on doing historical reproductions and I really enjoy historical furniture. I can spend hours on end at The Met in NYC looking at all the Goddard-Townsend pieces in the forgotten back end of the museum and marveling at the craftsmanship involved to make them.
The history of the USA as a country can be traced by the evolution of the common chair. Up until the late 1600's only the wealthy and royalty could afford a luxury of a chair in the home and it was America that really got the ball rolling with the invention of the Windsor chair in the early 1700's. One can tell what part of the country and approximate time it was made from the designs of the early chairs....I could write pages and pages of comments and text on that subject, its a fascinating topic for anyone remotely interested in American history.
Here's just a little tidbit:
The American Windsor was the first common man's chair and the strongest wood chair ever made. They were $ 5 each when new in the mid to late 1700's. They were always painted green and sometimes called "green chairs". Never stained in a natural finish, because they used three different woods in construction and the stains of the day would not take evenly on the chair. They were utility chairs and used daily with no special care given to them. At the height of popularity, there were (5) chair operations in New York City that built the majority of them, and this was back in day when there was no machinery - everything was done by hand including sawing the boards from the trees in a 'saw pit'. The largest of these late 1700's operations could turn out 220 chairs per week.
Fast forward to 2009. Of the current reproduction chair makers, no one has the capacity to build better than DR Dimes & Co. in New Hampshire. Even with modern high speed machinery, laser cutters an CNC machines they cannot put out 220 chairs per week!
Around 1800, the green chairs were looking a little tired, they had been used for 20 - 30 - 40 years and the paint was beat up. The fashion at the turn of the century was to paint these old green windsors White, Yellow, Blue, Red in any bright color. That lasted until about 1830, when American Windsors were 'retired' as out of fashion and new machinery started coming into play to make factory chairs of other styles.
So, if you ever see an ORIGINAL green-painted American Windsor chair (there are few survivors), it is worth several thousands dollars. Even one that has old white paint with green underneath is quite valuable. Unfortunately many of these old original paint chairs were stripped of their old paint in the 1950's , 60's and early 70s' and now worth only a fraction of the price they would bring has the old paint not been removed.
I've done many reproductions for several historic properties around the country over the past 25 years, including The Smithsonian, Pequot Indian Museum, Carlyle House, Independence Hall , Mt. Vernon Estate, Carlyle House, Gadsby's Tavern, Gunston Hall and several other historical projects. I can talk for hours on American chairs !
And ya'll thought I was all about leather furniture <G>
Duane Collie
Straight answers from thirty-six years in the business.
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