Today I would like to remind everyone that this blog presents information on period seating furniture in a format that is understandable and enjoyable to both scholars and non-scholars alike. Our current subject is a Chippendale style ribbon back arm chair discovered in the Fort Atkinson Wisconsin shop Five Star Antiques. At this point where we are looking for discrepancies between the design of the Ribband Back Chair as illustrated in Thomas Chippendale’s book The Gentleman and Cabinet-Maker’s Director and the found chair that I refer to as the blog chair. Today we will discuss the seat.
Here are frontal views of both chairs.
Top:Photo of Ribbon Back Chair by SHS
Bottom:Center chair in Plate XV in TG&CMD
The most obvious difference between the two seats is the amount of padding in them. The blog chair’s seat has a definite arc. It looks puffy. Upholstery terminology for this is a crowned seat.
Ribbon Back Chair Seat. Photo SHS
The Chippendale plate shows a chair seat that is much flatter than the blog chair. If you examine it closely you will see the illustrator thatched the seat area to give the idea that fabric covered the seat. There is a little rise in the center of the seat to show it is lightly padded.
Ribband Back Chair Seat. Center chair in Plate XV in TG&CMD
The blog chair exhibits a support system typical of the 19th century and still used in finer shops today; a webbed base onto which coil cone springs were tied. The Ribband Back chair illustrates upholstery typical of the time in which it was drawn in the 18th century; a webbed base on which padding was added.
This is the underside of the seat of the blog chair. I removed the black fabric covering the bottom.
Photo by SHS.
Keeping in mind that the seat is upside down you can see the springs rest on woven strips of fabric called webbing. The springs are hand sewn to the webbing. The springs are further held in place by being tied to each other by twine at the top. Both the webbing and the twine are secured to the chair frame by tacks. Below is a close-up of what I've just described.
Photo by SHS.
This technique is called eight way hand tied springs after the number of times the twine passes over and is tied to each spring. On the top of the springs we usually find a coarsely woven fabric called burlap. On the blog chair the upholsterer used a piece of leftover fabric to provide a surface onto which padding can be packed. The blog chair probably has cotton batting padding. My educated guess is all the original fill was removed and discarded. The metal strapping you see is a "quick fix" for sagging upholstery.
Understand that the presence of the springs is not immediate proof that the chair was made in the 19th century. Chairs and sofas were often updated by their owners, not only with the latest fabric, but also with the latest technology. In this case, if the chair was originally fabricated without springs, they could have been added at a later date.
In the next blog I will provide sketches of the seat upholstery construction of both chairs for comparison.
Bottoms up!
Theresa
Yummy Furniture and Design
theresamhs@sbcglobal.net
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