Antique Chairs

Georgian Chairs

Before speaking of Georgian furniture, there are one or two other types worth mentioning. About 1750 easy chairs had become popular for boudoirs and living-rooms. The best of these were wing-chairs, sometimes called grandmother's chairs. They were upholstered all over, with deep seats and low arms. The backs were high, with ears or wings projecting forward at the sides, for protection against drafts, as the occupant sat before the open fire. They were extremely comfortable, and are excellent to-day for living-rooms or chambers. The earlier ones had short cabriole legs in front, with ball-and-claw feet; later straight legs and valances were used. These chairs also appeared during the Georgian period, being made by Heppelwhite, Ince, Manwaring, and by American manufacturers, but probably not by Chippendale.

During all this time local American manufacturers and cabinet-makers had been making chairs which had no counterpart in England, and some of these are worth preserving and using in modern homes. Very early in New England there were turned chairs of local workmanship, and occasionally armchairs, made of American woods and usually painted. Chairs with straight banister and slat backs, rush seats, and turned legs and rungs-similar pelrvhite chair. 11'orth about $zoo chair of graceful proportions. Worth about those of England-were made in New York, New England, and Pennsylvania as early as 1700. These and the American variations of the Windsor, made in walnut, cherry, maple, hickory, poplar, ash, and pine, were the best that have come down to us. The rest are quite properly relegated to the kitchen or attic.

To return again to England, we come to the famous Georgian period, which, properly speaking, belonged to the reign of George III (176o-182o). Here we find the best furniture that England ever produced, but I would begin with a word of warning. Not everything belonging to the period is good. As in the poetry of Wordsworth, there is some of the ridiculous mingled with the sublime.

The Queen Anne chairs were stately, and far more beautiful than some of the Georgian productions. Chippendale was an adapter of styles, and as such he was not always successful. His work was exotic, and some of it a weird mixture of rococo, Dutch, Gothic, and Chinese. Adam was sometimes too coldly classic or too gaudy; Heppelwhite's construction faulty; Sheraton's decoration sometimes cheap-looking. It was the result of an artificial forcing of styles. Chippendale, the prince of them all, de-signed a few low-browed, broad-seated, heavy-footed affairs that take the palm for ugliness and discomfort, but which to-day command fabulous prices. So let the purchaser not be blinded by a great name, but select with discrimination.

It is only fair to say, however, that Chippendale himself was hardly to blame for this fault, as his personal productions were exceedingly fine in workmanship, and nearly always of beautiful proportions. He published three books of designs that were bought by the trade, who copied them with greater or less success. It is safe to say that ninety-nine out of one hundred so-called Chippendale chairs to be found to-day were not made by him. Most of them came from cabinet shops in various parts of England, and Chippendale himself does not deserve the blame for their mistakes in carrying out his designs. It is al-ways safer to class chairs of this style "of the Chippendale period," unless proof of their authenticity is indisputable.

When all is said, however, the modern American householder can find nothing better for home furnishing than the best of the Georgian work. Georgian chairs are not out of place in the drawing-room, music-room, parlor, or hall, Sheraton chairs being often delicate enough for either drawing-room or boudoir, but the best Chippendale and Heppelwhite chairs are superbly adapted to the uses of the modern dining-room, where the other furniture is reasonably contemporaneous in style. Furthermore, the work of the Georgian cabinet-makers was honest in construction, and the chairs are fairly comfortable, especially the Heppelwhite and Adam armchairs and most of the Chippendales.