A Few Weeks Off

I will be away from my writing desk until Tuesday the 31st of May.  A much needed vacation to Pennsylvania reminded me just how wooded Penn's Woods really are. Friends and family welcomed me into their homes and lives for eight full days.   

High school buddy Theresa Bush met me at Winterthur and we toured several rooms of the estate.  Sadly rain kept us out of the gardens where the azaleas were in full bloom! But it did not keep us out of the pizza parlor for a long catch-up chat.  Dear friend Jo Ann Maynard put me up and put up with my comings and goings at all times of the day!  But I finally got a chance to see her exciting photography at her website JMAYNARDFINEART.COM. And there was a comical attempt at using her inversion contraption to align my spine. 

Thanks to all my family and friends for a lovely time! 

And a special thank you to our veterans for your service to our country! As you watch the parade and attend Memorial Day festivities, I hope you find a comfortable place to sit. 
Like here.....

Photo Courtesy of Hongtao Zhou

Or here, or here or here......

Photo by the Author

Or even here.

Photo by SHS

Happy Memorial Day everyone!

Theresa

Yummy Furniture and Design

theresamhs@sbcglobal.net

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More Evidence

Today I will examine the structure of the carved back of the Chippendale style ribbon back armchair.  As mentioned earlier, its design closely follows that of a ribbon back armchair illustrated in Thomas Chippendale’s The Gentleman and Cabinet-Maker’s Director, plate # 15.

Plate 15, The Gentleman and Cabinet-Maker's Director, third edition.

But does the construction technique of the blog chair's back follow that put forth in the Director?

There is no written mention of construction techniques in Chippendales’ Director. John T. Kirk, a Guggenheim fellow, curator, professor emeritus at Boston College and author on American furniture touches on the construction of the splat of an authentic 18^th century Philadelphia Chippendale style chair in his American Furniture; Understanding Styles, Construction and Quality. Here he is speaking of one of the famous Cadwalader chairs. “The splat area is made of three sections: a horizontal-grain piece connects the stiles; vertical parts connect it to the top rail and the shoe.”(12)

To clarify, look at the illustration below.

Plate 15, The Gentleman and Cabinet-Maker's Director, third edition.

The horizontal piece (1) is in the center of the back; it includes the bow and the ribbon tails and connects to the side pieces called stiles. The vertical parts are (2) above and (3) below the ribbon. Kirk mentions three pieces. I’m going to assume that each of the pieces was made of solid wood because in all my research of 18^th century furniture solid wood was always the medium used.  Also, Kirk would have mentioned if it was not.   

Here is a photo of the ribbon back blog chair. In the frontal view, the center splat is all one piece.

Photo SHS

Further, the top rail is an extension of the splat. It is joined to the stiles at about 2” down from the top of the ears. Look closely, the joint is about 1/4" below the carving.  Also there is an ever so slight color change between the two pieces. 

Photo SHS

              This is a bird’s eye view of the blog chair.  

Photo SHS

 You are looking directly at the splat (left) and top rail (right). For perspective note the chair seat in the background. A joint of the splat to the rail would be a seen as a vertical line towards the right of this image. There is no joint. Instead, two horizontal lines that are lighter than the rest of the wood finish grab your attention. This is paint that was meant to cover the fine lines of the three plied layers of the back. So the back splat IS made of three pieces of wood in an entirely different configuration than the 18th century original.

           Now look more closely at the detail photo below.

Photo SHS

Notice the fine line between the second and third layer of wood?

Plywood is hardly something that jumps to mind when thinking of good quality furniture, but in 1856 John Henry Belter obtained 4 patents for the process of laminating layers of rosewood together to construct the deeply carved and curved backs of the Rococo Revival seating furniture for which he is famous.  Many of Belter’s pieces are extant and now reside in museums.   

The survival of the blog chair is also testament to the success of the process. This Victorian reproduction was probably made around the time of America’s centennial, when Colonial Revival was all the rage. It is still in good shape.

And to wrap things up tonight, a word (or two) taken from an email from Charles F. Hummel.

“The use of three-plied wood would signify to me that the chair is definitely rococo revival. John Henry Belter, although not the first cabinetmaker to do so, is generally credited with making the use of plied wood common as a means of cutting  intricate designs in seating furniture.”

Theresa

Yummy Furniture and Design

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12. John T. Kirk, American Furniture Understanding Styles, Construction and Quality, New York, Harry N. Abrams, Inc. 116.

Rolling Into the 19th Century!

All along we have been talking about features of the blog chair that could point to it being a 19^th century reproduction.

Photo: SHS

One of these factors is the presence of a sprung seat, which was discussed in the March 1st blog titled Webbing and Through Tenons. Another is the carvings: while they appear to be beautifully composed and in keeping with rococo themes, the overall composition is quite symmetric, instead of asymmetric as an 18^th century object would be.

Photo: SHS

Today we discuss the height of the seat of the blog chair. Seat heights have varied throughout the ages.  As an upholsterer, I have customized seat heights to fit many a client’s specific needs.  They range anywhere from 14” to 21” high; generally the taller seats are more contemporary.  To check myself, I just measured the seat height of a side chair here in my office and it is 18 ½ inches tall at the seat.

As mentioned yesterday, I was fortunate to have spoken with Charles Hummel after a lecture he presented at the UW-Madison last fall. We discussed the castor on the blog chair which I drew on a piece of notepaper and he identified its period of manufacture as 1820-25. 

Illustration by the author, Photo: SHS

So that would date the chair to the 19^th century, right? Again, not so fast! The castor could have been added at a later date!

One way to discern if a castor was added to a chair at a date later than its original manufacture is to examine the place where it was installed. Look for uneven saw and file marks at the tip of the chair leg; dead giveaways that an inexperienced craftsperson was making an adjustment to the circumference of the leg to make it fit the castor.

Does the leg show signs of cracking around the stem of the castor? Again, an inexperienced person would not know that if you drill directly into a chair leg, you weaken the strength of the leg. A stemmed castor would put pressure on the leg every time someone sits on it.

The blog chair castor shows no signs of tampering!

Photo: SHS

Another is to measure the height of the seat of the chair onto which the castor was installed.  If the chair seat is unusually high, the castor is evidently added on.  Trouble is, I wasn’t sure what measurement would be too high on an 18^th century chair since through experience I had seen such a wide variety of seat heights, none of which I researched.

Hummel clarified: if the seat height is greater than 17” at the rail, then the castors were added on. Well guess what?, at the seat rail we have just 17”.  

In this photo the top of the rail is at the the very top of the image under the upholstery.

Photo: SHS

The sprung seat itself reaches a height of 21”. Without the castor, the measurement from the bottom of the foot to the top of the seat rail is 15 ½”.            

The cumulative evidence is pointing directly to the blog chair as a 19^th century reproduction.

We still have more to explore, so don’t go away! 

Theresa

Yummy Furniture and Design

theresamhs@sbcglobal.net

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Merrily we roll along....

Another clue to the blog chair’s date of manufacture OR update is castors on its feet. We’ve all seen a great deal of castors/casters on a variety of furniture. The Victorian era springs to my mind when I think of the widespread use of the small wheels fixed to the bottoms of furniture legs allowing them to be moved easily. However, while working my way through Upholstery in America & Europe from the 17th Century to World War I, Wallace Gusler, Leroy Graves and Mark Anderson include a photo of an 18^th century back stool with simple, unadorned castors on all four feet in their article on an 18^th century upholstery technique.(11) Cool!

I own two chairs I’ve identified as Victorian with castors.  One is a Rococo Revival piece and another that I will call neoclassical revival because of the urn shaped splats in the space between the arm and seat rails plus other identifying qualities. It is the neoclassical chair that sports a castor similar to the blog chair.

 

 While the top base is square and the castor here is round, both have a beaded trim along the top of their plates; the plate being the piece of metal onto which the chair leg rests. This could mean that both sets of castors are 19^th century. But does it follow that both chairs are of the 19th century?

After making this connection between the two chairs, I had to find a way to verify my hunch.  Luckily I attended a lecture on the Dominy Craftsmen at the UW-Madison last November 2010, presented by Charles Hummel, retired (but still working) Curator Emeritus at Winterthur. Per Hummel, castors sporting little beads of brass around the edge of the castor plate were first made around 1820-25. Prior to that, decoration was simpler, sometimes composed of a simple reeded trim. 

Hummel dated the castors from the sketch I provided him and shown below.

Sketch by the Author, Photo SHS

If the castors are of the 19^th century as is the upholstery technique, is the pendulum beginning to swing in the direction of the blog chair also being a 19^th century object?  Tune in tomorrow when we discuss this exciting development. 

And here is my conversation with Charles Hummel which was recorded and posted at the UW Material Culture Blog!

Theresa

Yummy Furniture and Design

theresamhs@sbcglobal.net

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11. Cooke, Edward S. Jr., Upholstery in America and Europe from the 17^th C to WWI., Journal Article within the text: Wallace Gusler, Leroy Graves and Mark Anderson, The Technique of 18^th-Century Over-the-rail Upholstery, New York, W.W. Norton & Co. 90.