Chair, Rocking

Description

Bird's-eye maple posts, maple slats and rockers. Maple stretchers. Replacement tape seat in brown, badly faded. Three slat back. Natural finish (refinish?). Originally fitted with tilter buttons, given that both rear posts have tilter sockets visible to either side of the slots for the rocker blades.

Notes

Both of these chairs (#1955.7194.1, #1955.7849.1) originally functioned as side chairs configured with button tilters, indicated by the now hollow sockets on the bottoms of their posts. Holes for the leather thongs that once held the tilters in their sockets are still visible on the posts between the stretchers. When the sockets split on the chairs-- as happened on both of these chairs--the addition of rockers gave the tilting chairs a new function. A common ancestry in the New Hampshire Shaker communities is displayed through shared details in decoration and construction. Both chairs have the balloon-like finials that have characteristics of Shaker chairs from the New Hampshire bishopric. Similarities between the chairs also include their primary wood, maple, and the profiles of their top edge slats that are chamfered forward. It is unlikely, however, that the chairs were made by the same person. The top slat on one chair (#1955.7849.1), is slightly taller than the bottom two, and the distance between the top slat and the middle is slightly less than between the middle and bottom slats. The posts on the this chair gradually taper above the seat, and the "necks" of the finials are narrow. In contrast, the slats on the other chair (#1955.7194.1) are of the same height, and they are spaced equally apart. The finials of this chair have thicker "necks" than the other chair, and the posts taper less above the seat. The rockers on the chairs similarly indicate that they were added at different times or by different people. The rockers of one chair (7194) are attached with commercially-made screws, and they do not splay out as much as those on the other chair (7849). One of the chairs (7194) has "18" stamped into the top of the left leg, meaning that this chair was made for the community and not to be sold. Numbers marked the room where the chair belonged, so that if it were borrowed or moved it could be speedily returned.