Discover Mid-America — November 2011

By any other name: still a chair

One of the earliest chairs in Western history with a person’s name attached to it is the 15^th century Savonarola chair. Who was so famous to have a chair named after him?

Girolamo Savonarola was an Italian priest with an attitude about change and authority. He was vehemently opposed to the Enlightenment of the Renaissance and he preached against the moral corruption of the clergy, including Pope Alexander VI. This was not a healthy time to be a protestor and he was burned at the stake in 1498 for heresy.

But he had a neat chair. Modeled after the Roman curule campaign chair, it had a solid seat instead of a fabric seat. It also folded like the Roman chair but instead was made of a series of interlocking slats. It looked like the modern version of the director’s chair. That type chair is also sometimes called a Dante chair, named after the 14th century poet Dante Alighieri.

In the mid-19^th century, a long-standing problem with chairs was solved by an English designer. In 1866, William Morris adapted a design by rural chair maker Ephraim Colman, which changed a rigid back parlor chair to an adjustable reclining chair. He did this amazing feat by using hinges at the base of the back and added a notched support in the rear that held solid rod. The rod supported the weight of the back and it could be moved to different notches to adjust the position of the back. Thus was born the manual recliner—today, known as the famous Morris chair—even though Morris didn’t actually design it.

Another case of ambiguous lineage is the platform glider rocker. The glider first appeared in the late 1880s using an iron mechanism that included a swing arm mounted in a frame that allowed the frame of a rocker to gently glide back and forth rather than rocking. The initial patent was awarded to George F. Hall of New York on May 29, 1888. But Mr. Hall, for reasons unknown, assigned the patent to Peter Lowentraut of Newark, NJ. When it went into production it was called the Lowentraut glider but the patent applied only to the mechanism itself, not the design of the chair.

By the 1890s, another chair of almost identical design using a virtually identical mechanism hit the market. It was called the McClean Patent Rocker made by Biver, Ernster & Co. of Chicago. Six models of this piece were advertised in Ward’s 1895 catalog. So the glider could have been called a Hall glider, a Lowentraut glider or a McClean glider.

Another rocker has no such ambiguity associated with its name. That’s the Lincoln rocker. In the mid-19^th century, men were not seen in public in rocking chairs. Rocking chairs were considered to be feminine chairs uniquely suited to the special needs of women. They were generally limited to private use at home.

But Lincoln, who was reported to have numerous aches and pains, found a large scale rocker to be a comfort. On the evening he went to the Ford Theatre, he requested a rocker in his box. The only one available was a Rococo Revival Grecian-style chair, belonging to theater owner John T. Ford, which he kept in a private room in the theater. He had his own chair placed in Lincoln’s private box and this was the chair Lincoln was seated in when he was assassinated. Thus, the Lincoln rocker was born.

The chair had a long journey after that. Still stained with what was then thought to be Lincoln’s blood, it went to the office of the Secretary of War Edwin Stanton to be used as evidence in the trial of the conspirators. When Stanton retired, it went to the Smithsonian. It took many years and several lawsuits before Mrs. Harry Ford, wife of John Ford’s brother, could recover the chair that she claimed belonged to the Ford family. She finally was awarded the chair in 1929. It was sold at auction immediately for $2,400 to an agent of Henry Ford’s Museum in Dearborn, MI. Henry Ford was no relation to Harry Ford.

The chair remains in the Henry Ford Museum today, having resisted several attempts by the National Parks Service to take it away. You can see the original chair online at http://home.att.net/~rjnorton/Lincoln11.html.

Send your comments, questions and pictures to me at P0 Box 215, Crystal River, FL 34423 or info@furnituredetective.com

Visit Fred's website at www.furnituredetective.com. His book "HOW TO BE A FURNITURE DETECTIV"? is available for $18.95 plus $3.00 S&H. Send check or money order for $21.95 to Fred Taylor, PO Box 215, Crystal River, FL 34423.

Fred and Gail Taylor?s DVD, ?IDENTIFICATION OF OLDER & ANTIQUE FURNITURE?, ($17.00 + $3.00 S&H) and a bound compilation of the first 60 columns of "COMMON SENSE ANTIQUES by Fred Taylo" ($25.00 + $3.00 S&H) are also available at the same address. For more information call (800) 387-6377, fax (352) 563-2916, or e-mail info@furnituredetective.com.