A Refurbished Ladies Chair

This intricate crest belongs to a dainty little ladies chair. It is so small that by our standards we would think of it as a youth's chair.  But then people are a lot bigger now then they used to be!  Now it is just the right size for an occasional bedroom chair  or for sitting in when you are putting your shoes on.  

The chair came to us with broken cane on the back.  Enough was broken that we really couldn't repair it, we needed to completely replace it.  It was woven with a 'blind cane' method, so the holes that the cane goes into don't go all the way through to the back.  This is much more challenging then regular hand cane.  Once the cane work was done, the 'blonde' looking natural cane needed to be colored to better blend in with the chair.

We also refurbished the chair.  This means that we refreshed the existing finish rather then applying a new one.  Depending on the method used, refurbishing isn't always a job that requires high levels of skill, but it does require high levels of labor.  For this chair we chose a wax color that would fill in where the old finish color had worn off.  This wax is applied by hand, left to dry, and then polished by hand.  This polishing process is quite labor intensive and not for the weak of elbow.  And in addition, this chair has so many little nooks and crannies that the polishing task was bumped up several notches in difficulty.  No one wants a glob of wax stuck in one of those pretty carved leaves!

Chair for Upholstery

Before, During, After

It can be difficult to see just how beautiful the 'before and after' photos are, when a chair is missing it's upholstery.  But let's give it a try.   This lovely old 'shield back' chair came to us after the upholsterer had stripped it down to the frame.  This step is important because we can not work with the chair if there are still shards of padding hanging on.  We need to be able to access the wood without any hinderance.    Once the upholstery is stripped off and the chair is brought to us, we strip of the finish with our water based stripper.  It goes through three different liquid processes to get that wood sparkly clean.  

After this, any repairs can be done.  It is important to get those repairs done while there is no cloth on the chair.  With the cloth on, the joints become covered and impossible to reach.  After the repairs it is time to prep sand the chair and apply the stain and finish.  For this chair, our client chose an English Oak stain with a Dark Pine toner.   This color combination is going to look very nice with the golden blond colored upholstery she has chosen.  Now that our work is completed,  it goes back to the Upholsterer for the final step.

Working On A Piece Of History

We have the honor of working on all kinds of family heirlooms here at our shop, but not often do we get to work on pieces of history quite this old.  You see this is not just any Windsor Chair,  this is an original Windsor Chair from approximately 1770.  Which makes this a very old chair!  Because it is so old, we didn't do very much to it.  We simply cleaned, waxed and polished it, leaving the original finish in place.

To help you understand why this chair is so special, besides it's age, let me tell you just a little tiny bit about the history of Windsor Chairs.   'Legend has it that King George 2nd, seeking shelter from a storm, arrived at a peasant cottage and was given a multi-spindeled chair to sit on.  It's comfort and simplicity impressed him so much that he had is own furniture-maker copy it- and the Windsor vogue was born' according to the Treasury of American Design and Antiques by Clarence P. Hornung.

By 1730 the Windsor Chair had begun to make it's way to the American Colonies, where furniture makers immediately began perfecting the design, and making it a quintessential American chair. The best known version of the Windsor chair is called a 'hoop back' chair.  This is the same version as you can see in the photo above.  This particular style of chair gained prominence right around the American Revolution and was the style of choice in the homes of many founding fathers including George Washington, Thomas Jefferson,  John Adams and Benjamin Franklin.  In fact it was so popular during this era that cabinetmaker Francis Trumbull was commissioned to make over 100 of these chairs for the Philadelphia State House where the Declaration of Independence was drafted in 1776. 

If you look at the chairs in this engraving by Edward Savage (circa 1776) of the signing of the Declaration, you can see the very same hoop back Windsor Chairs being used in that State house,  as the design of the chair we had in our shop.  That is exciting!  While I am sure this chair we had in our shop was not in Independence Hall,  it was certainly from the same era.  There are several great websites that do a great job of explaining the important place that Windsor Chairs had in the history of the United States.  One of those sites had this great paragraph.....

Looking back through American history, Windsor chairs can be seen in many notable places as documented through paintings. As a matter of fact, George Washington himself fancied Windsor chairs - with a recorded 27 Windsor chairs at his Mount Vernon home.  Thomas Jefferson is said to have written a draft of the Declaration of Independence while seated in a Windsor. When the Declaration was signed in Philadelphia’s Independence Hall on July 4, 1776, the assembly sat in Windsors. Washington’s officers sat in Windsor chairs at Fraunces Tavern in New York City to listen to his farewell speech. In more recent history, Henry Francis du Pont, the founder of Winterthur Museum in Delaware, had 250 Windsor chairs in his collection.

For more from that site check out this weblink...  http://www.gummelchairworks.com/Windsor-Chair-History.htm

Other interesting pages you might want to check out are here...

http://antiques.about.com/od/furniture/a/WindsorChair013010.htm

http://history.hanover.edu/courses/excerpts/111windsor.html

Restoration of a Chippendale Chair Set

Chippendale is probably one of the most well known furniture makers and we had the pleasure of  working on a set of Chippendale style chairs in our shop.  Actually these two chairs are so old, they may be originals.

As you can see, they came to us in really bad shape.  One was completely in pieces but they both needed to be thoroughly re-glued.  As we have worked on this set of chairs some really interesting things became apparent to us.  These little things such neat historical clues.

The chairs have identical styling, as though they were made by the same furniture house, but they are also subtly different, as though different craftsmen made each one.  Notice how the arms are the same curve, same pattern, but one has a wider flair than the other.  One chair is also a tiny bit taller than the other.  They both have the same shell motif on the front of the seat, but one is carved a little more shallow then the other.  When we put together the way the joints were made,  the tight grain of the mahogany wood (which means it really has to be very old)  and the hand made details,  we begin to see that these are very very old chairs.

With a little bit of digging about the history of Chippendale design, it begins to look as though these are original, late 1700's chairs, probably made in the Chippendale design house itself, and definitely made in England.  English Chippendale furniture was made of Mahogany, whereas American manufacturers generally used Cherry.  Thomas Chippendale also employed 40+ craftsmen who all used the same patterns, but each worked on a piece until completion.  American makers used a more assembly style process which means that the slight variations in this chair have to be from English manufacture.

After we performed the extensive repairs and regluing that these chairs needed,  we prepped them for staining and then our customer came in and chose the stain color herself.  The color she chose, and that you see on these chairs in Dark Pine stain over Mahogany wood which gives a gorgeous rich  red color. After staining with our water based stains,  a glaze was applied so that the intricate carving that Chippendale chairs are known for,  could be fully emphasized.  Now all the chairs need is a new seat and they will be ready to grace the most elegant living room.

It has been such delight to bring these chairs back to life for our customer.  They were her grandmother's chairs and have been in dis-repair for as long as she can remember.  With such a beautiful history,  it is good to have the chairs look beautiful as well.

Antique Veneered Chair Set

We are just beginning work on this beautiful 'his and hers' set of chairs.  This old set is made of walnut which has gained a lovely hue as it has aged.  They came in to us with two different stain colors and now that they are stripped, we can see some interesting information about the set.  

You can see in the second picture an image of the side rail of the arm chair.  The upholstery attaches to the upper section of the rail, and the lower section is exposed.  We can tell that this set was made in Europe because they implemented a practice that was never done in the United States.  While the entire chair was made of solid walnut, the rails around the chair were made with a 'cheep' wood and then covered in a walnut veneer.    They did this to save in cost, but here in the US, that was always way to much hassle.  If it had been made here, it would have been all solid wood and no extra step of veneer.

The veneer on this chair has been damaged, and part of our repair process will be to either replace the veneer or do some color touch up to make the damage blend with the rest of the piece.  Be sure to check back often as work on this beautiful set continues.

Old Morris Chair Gets A New Life

This Morris Chair came to us in bad shape.  The finish on the wood was failing and had turned a dusty color or was just worn off.   The casters on the legs ware missing as well.    We began of course by stripping the chair in our immersion system which got the wood very clean and ready for prep sanding.  The chair originally had a dark stain on it, and while the chair's owner could have chosen any stain, they decided to go with something that would have been similar to the original color.   The color they chose is Walnut, and over that it has a Satin Finish.  

After the finishing was completed,  the old holes for the casters were drilled out, filled with dowels and then re drilled so that new brass casters would fit securely.  Now all it needs is a new padded seat and back and it will be ready to grace any room!

Morris Chairs were first marketed in 1866 by William Morris and is one of the original 'recliner' style chairs.  The chairs featured a hinged back, set between two un-upholstered arms.  The angle of the back could be adjusted through a row of holes, pegs or notches in each arm.  Reproductions are still made today, but they generally have a lighter wood stain, and simple oak slats instead of the decorative spindles under the arms.