The Classic Windsor Chair

 

QUESTION: We’ve had a Windsor chair in our family as far back as I can remember. I believe it belonged to my great-great grandmother. Today, I use it as a chair at my computer desk. What can you tell me about this chair?

ANSWER: You have a standard bow-back Windsor chair, the kind found in just about every upper class household in Colonial America. While most people consider them delicate antiques, they’re quite sturdy and have many uses. 

One of the most graceful and usable of all traditional chairs, the Windsor is also the most successful piece of furniture in American history. Its origins, however, are English, dating back to the turned and joined stools of 16th-Century England. The name probably derives from Windsor, where a prolific chairmaker  produced and sold the chairs in the 18th Century. He sent them down the Thames River to London where people referred to them as coming "up from Windsor."

Wheelwrights rather than cabinetmakers made Windsor chairs in England. They remained farmhouse or tavern furniture for a long time. But here in America, homeowners embraced the Windsor as a sort of all-around chair. They could be stored in a hallway and brought into any room that needed more seating when guests arrived. They could be easily carried. And they could be brought outdoors to provide seating on the lawn on hot summer days. Even the most prominent members of Colonial communities used them. George Washington seated his guests on the East portico of Mount Vernon in 30 Windsor chairs.

As a piece of furniture, the Windsor holds historical significance. Thomas Jefferson sat in a bow-back. writing-arm Windsor while composing the first draft of the Declaration of Independence in late June of 1776. And when Benjamin Franklin and other members of the Continental Congress voted to secede from the mother country on , July 1, 1776 in Independence Hall, they sat in bow-back Windsors.

There are eight different kinds of American Windsors, including the low-back, or Philadelphia Windsor, named for the city where a craftsman constructed the first Windsor in the colonies, the comb-back, fan-back, bow-back, loop-back, arch-back or New England armchair, rod-back, and arrow-back. Each had its distinct use. Windsor makers socketed all parts together except for the shaped arms of the fan-back, arrow-back, and rod-back chairs. On these, they doweled the inner ends of the arms or screwed them to the back uprights.

Windsor makers preferred pine, whitewood, and basswood for seats, hickory or ash for spindles, maple. yellow birch, or beech for turned legs. stretchers, and supports, and hickory, oak, ash, or beech for hoops. bows, or combs. And because of this, makers gave their Windsors several coats of dark green paint. In the 19th century, small factory workshops produced Windsors of pine and maple. And even to this day, craftsmen still use the same time-tested techniques for constructing reproduction Windsors. 

Most people are familiar with the low-back, barrel-shaped chairs used from the mid 19th to the early 20th century. These were actually descendants of the earliest low-back Windsor chairs made in America. However, these don’t usually appear in historical house museums from the Colonial period. Made from 1725 to1760, this Philadelphia style chair had blunt-arrow legs—turned legs with a cylindrical lower section and ball.

The comb back was the second type of Windsor chair made in the Colonies. The crest rail with its spindles resembled a wide-toothed comb, hence the name. In both England and America, the Windsor became known as the stick chair. The wide saddle seat is half round with a straight front. The deeply curved one-piece arm terminates in knuckled-curved ends and is supported at front by baluster-turned uprights. The back is formed of nine bulbous spindles that pass through the arms and extend upward into a wide comb with volute ends.

Fan-backs had tall spindles flanked by stiles and came in both armchair and side chair styles. 

Legend says that an archer’s bow influenced the design of the bow back Windsor. Realistically, it probably evolved from the comb back. Also known as the hoop-back or sack-back, this Windsor was the most commonly used in America and England from 1740 to 1800 because of its elliptical seat and seven tapered spindles that pierce a semi-circular arm rail and bowed top rail. 

During the 19th century, the Windsor chair had become more decorative, including those with arrow-shaped splats and paint-decorated 

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The Origin of American Studio Pottery

 

QUESTION: I’ve always loved handmade pottery. And looking back over history, it seems to have existed since ancient times. Recently, a friend told me that Charles Binns was the father of American studio pottery. Exactly what does that mean? Isn’t all handmade pottery made in a studio?

ANSWER: While pottery, itself, has existed for eons, what’s referred to as “studio pottery” is a relatively recent phenomenon, dating to the very late 19th century and early 20th. 

Although now nearly forgotten, Charles Fergus Binns, a studio potter and instructor, enjoyed a national reputation during the early years of the 20th century for his classic stoneware pots. Binns' made many of his legendary stoneware vases, bottles, bowls and jars during the height of the Arts and Crafts Movement in the U.S.

Born in England in 1857, Binns left school at age 14 to become an apprentice at the Royal Worcester Porcelain Works, where his father was a co-managing director. Eventually, he occupied an administrative position at the Royal Worcester factory and  became a recognized scholar and lecturer concerning world ceramics. In Paris, in 1878, he exhibited his early experiments with clay bodies and glazes. Binns accompanied the Royal Worcester exhibit of 1,400 pieces to the Chicago World's Fair in 1893 and made the United States his home in 1897. 

Binns's ceramic technique focused on his pots as utilitarian objects. His work included vases, urns, and bowls. He threw each piece in three forms on a wheel, turning them on a lathe and piecing them together afterwards. One of the concepts Binns taught was “dead ground,” in which the parts of making pottery that couldn’t be precisely controlled, such as firing temperature or glaze calculations, were mitigated by control over glaze placement.

In 1899, Binns helped found the American Ceramics Society. His role in this organization led to the directorship of the newly formed ceramics department of Alfred University, the first United States college to combine programs in ceramic art and science. In the years that followed, Binns shared once-secret clay recipes and glaze formulas with his students, including Arthur Eugene Baggs, William Victor Bragdon, R. Guy Cowan, Maija Grotell and Elizabeth Overbeck, who were largely responsible for fostering the idea of the artist-potter in America.  

Binns is commonly referred to as the "father of American studio ceramics." This title reflects not only his creation of unique stoneware pots in the Arts & Crafts style, but additionally acknowledges his accomplishment of bringing vital information about ceramic clay bodies and glaze recipes to ordinary people, thus laying the foundation of the flourishing studio ceramics movement in the United States that began in the early 1900's.

In 1900, New York Governor Teddy Roosevelt signed a bill establishing the New York State School of Clay-Working and Ceramics—now the New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University. Appointed as the founding director at that time, Binns held the position for over 30 years until his retirement in 1931, during which time he became known for his classic pots with rich monochrome glazes.

Before Binns' arrival at Alfred University, it was customary for one

person to throw art pottery on the wheel and another person to glaze or decorate surfaces mar reflected his respect for the natural materials he used. He admired Oriental forms and glazes. and sometimes signed his pieces by putting his initials, “CFB" inside a circle closely resembling Chinese marks. His signed pieces ;following Asian tradition, Include his initials along with the year in which he made them.

Binns' work was widely exhibited during his lifetime, including his earliest documented stoneware vase, signed and dated 1905, and his final creation, a fragile bisque vase that he

signed and dated 1934, which he left unglazed and unfired at the time of his death. A memorial exhibition Of Binns’ works drew admiring crowds at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York in 1935.

American studio ceramics really began with Charles Fergus Binns, who introduced the principles of chemistry and materials science into the ceramic arts. 

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The Enduring Beauty of Lace

QUESTION: Recently, I was going through an old trunk in my grandmother’s attic and discovered several beautiful old lace tablecloths. One of them had a label which read “Quaker Lace Co.” Can you tell me anything about this company and whether these old tablecloths are worth anything?

ANSWER: In the past decade or so, vintage linens have gained in popularity. Fine old lace ones are in rather high demand, as people seek to bring back the nostalgic beauty of bygone eras.

Finely patterned handmade lace has been available for centuries. However, lace tablecloths have only been used since the latter part of the 19th century, after the invention of mechanical lace-making looms. Traditionally, making lace by hand was a labor intensive process, but with the mechanical looms, it became possible to produce lace wide enough for tablecloths.

Taking care of fine lace tablecloths required extra help, so when domestic servants began to disappear from middle-class homes, so, too, did high- maintenance lace linens. But a new generation of housekeepers have discovered the beauty and elegance of lace. They tend to use fine lace tablecloths to dress up their dinner tables for special occasions.

While many of these fine old pieces were handmade and can cost hundreds and sometimes thousands of dollars, others were mechanically produced by companies such as the Quaker Lace Company of Philadelphia. Those produced by the company from 1880 to about 1913 are highly desired by collectors. To collectors, it doesn’t matter whether a lace tablecloth is handmade or machine-made or simple or ornate. Vintage Quaker Lace pieces sell for $10 to $200, with the average price being around $60-100 for a large tablecloth big enough to fit a table for 12.

Originally founded in 1889 as the Bromley Manufacturing Company by the three sons of John Bromley, an English carpet maker who came to the United Sates in the 1840s and became successful in textiles. The Bromley brothers used the profits from their carpet manufacturing business to purchase looms from Nottingham, England to produce machine-made lace. In 1894, the Bromley brothers purchased a factory on 4th Street and Lehigh Avenue in Philadelphia, and renamed their company Lehigh Manufacturing. A bit later, they opened a second factory on 22nd Street and Lehigh Avenue. In 1911 they renamed their operation once again the Quaker Lace Company.

Quaker Lace became the leader in machine-made lace. Their lace was durable, resisted stretching and pulling, and could withstand washing without losing its shape or transparency. In 1987 they closed their  4th Street factory, but continued to produce tablecloths at plants in Lionville, Pennsylvania, and Winthrop, Maine. The company continually researched and invented new ways of chemically treating their lace so that it would maintain its shape. The Bromleys sold their tablecloths mainly in department stores, but when many of them began to close, the company’s profits declined. The company had to  declare bankruptcy in 1992. Lorraine Linens purchased the patterns and Quaker Lace name and  continued to manufacture lace tablecloths until 2007 when it, too, filed for bankruptcy.