Chair, Side

Description

Maple chair with three slat back and transitional finials. Chair seat is woven tape, pink (was probably red originally) and a dull green striped tape woven together in checkerboard fashion. No chair pad. Wood is painted yellow. Wood button tilters.

Notes

A popular maxim about Shaker furniture is that is was made to be purely functional, devoid of all unnecessary ornament. The Shakers certainly limited-- but by no means eliminated-- decoration on their furniture. Although carving, veneer, painted designs, and other forms of decoration are seldom encountered on Shaker furniture made before the Civil War, the Shakers decorated their furniture using subtler techniques. Decorative moldings and feet sawn into round shapes are two examples of decoration that have nothing to do with the function of the furniture. This chair illustrates the quiet decoration that the Shakers added to their seating furniture. The turned finials, low curves on the slats, and graceful tapering on the legs are elements that function solely as ornament. The Shakers also used color as a decorative medium, seen in the paint and the tape seat. All wood requires some type of finish for protection, but the bright yellow paint on this chair surpasses the role of merely a protective layer. Similarly, the red and bluish-green colors of the original seat augment the chair with additional swaths of color. To say, then, that the Shakers eschewed all embellishments would be inaccurate. Attributes that differentiate Shaker furniture from that made by non-Believers are often decorative: bright colors in the paints, washes, and seating; turned designs in the finials and legs; and the shapes and profiles of the slats. This chair features button joint tilts. The rotating plug fit into a socket at the base of the post, and was secured with a rawhide thong threaded and plugged through the post.