Robert F. Trent
Mid-Atlantic Easy Chairs, 1770 –1820: Old Questions and New Evidence

American easy chairs have enjoyed renewed attention over the last twenty years because of the emergence of previously unknown examples with original upholstery and the need of museums and private collectors to correctly reupholster stripped frames. Interpretive questions surrounding these objects will be examined in the following essay and in the accompanying catalogue that describes and illustrates the upholstery evidence on fifteen easy chairs. Controversy, such as it is, centers on three questions about the intended use of easy chairs. What is the significance of the close stools found in many of them? Were easy chairs intended for the aged? Or were they "sick chairs" of one sort or another? Strictly speaking, each of these questions constitutes a separate issue, and the issues need not be interrelated. A chair with a close stool need not have been intended for an old or ill person. Ill people were not necessarily aged, and aged people often were astonishingly vigorous.

Early furniture historians Charles Woolsey Lyon, Luke Vincent Lock­wood, and Esther Singleton paid little attention to easy chairs, other than noting their existence and citing references to them in probate records. The first author to advance a strong interpretation of easy chairs was William Macpherson Hornor, Jr., who in 1931 argued that easy chairs always were used in second story bedrooms or sleeping chambers and never in parlors or other public rooms on the ground story because most were fitted with close stools.^[1]

Morrison H. Heckscher's 1971—1972 exhibition and catalogue on easy chairs endorsed some of what Hornor had claimed, but it added many subtle points about usage, most particularly that easy chairs were used by the aged and the ill. He specifically noted one of two Copley portraits (National Portrait Gallery and Los Angeles County Museum of Art) depicting aged women seated in easy chairs and cited "The Chair in which the late Duke of York died" from Peter and Michel Angelo Nicholson's The Practical Cabinet Maker (1826—1827). The latter illustrated a fairly standard square-back easy chair with saddle cheeks and an adjustable footrest.^[2]

Recent scholarship suggests that easy chairs had a variety of functions in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century households. In At Home: The American Family 1750—1870, Elisabeth Donaghy Garrett cited numerous period references that indicate that easy chairs served as refuges for women before and after childbirth. She also emphasized that owners used slip­covers on easy chairs for the purposes of washability and to achieve unified decorative treatments in bedchambers.^[3]

The only scholar to severely criticize these ideas is Myrna Kave, who, in a 1984 catalogue entry, wrote:

In recent years, scholars have stressed that easy chairs were chamber furniture for the elderly. They cite the origin of the form as an invalid's seat, the portraits of elderly sitters in such chairs, and the usual placement of eighteenth-century easy chairs in bedchambers. They even claim that easy chairs commonly were fitted with chamber pots. In their attempt to correct the impressions created by the modern use of easy chairs as parlor furnishings, they overstate their case. None of the easy chairs described . . . has a chamber pot fitting because there was no such practice with cabriole easy chairs .... Nor were they solely chairs for the elderly . . . . Easy chairs may have been favorites of the elderly, but the chairs were prestigious items purchased by men of means long before they retired to dozing while seated.^[4]

Kaye's claim regarding the absence of close stools in cabriole-leg easy chairs is refuted by a Charleston, South Carolina, easy chair in the Winterthur collection (fig. 1), that has mortises in the front and rear seat rails, indicating that it originally was fitted with parallel supports of the sort needed for a board with a pothole.^[5] Other mid-eighteenth-century American easy chairs with potholes have survived, but the practice of fitting them with close stools does not appear to have become widespread until after 1790. In short, Kaye may be factually incorrect but conceptually on target; easy chairs may not have been fitted with close stools all that often before 1790.

As for Kaye's assertion that easy chairs were not strictly for use by the elderly, one might note that younger people were subject to many debilitating illnesses, health problems, and conditions. Among these were frequent pregnancies for younger women and gout or arthritis for middle-aged men. Although people commonly slept in a semirecumbant position (achieved through the use of bolsters), many may have been forced to sleep or doze sitting upright because of chronic pulmonary disorders, which were widespread before antibiotics or antihistamines were available to combat the common cold, bronchitis, pneumonia, tuberculosis, asthma, or allergies.

The intended use of easy chairs can be determined by examining the prescriptive literature, including design books, price books, medical literature, and prints; probate inventories (which reveal a great deal about placement and usage); and the physical evidence of surviving examples. Because most of the chairs in the interpretive catalogue that follows were made in Philadelphia, the remainder of this essay contains references drawn from Philadelphia probate inventories in the period 1780 to 1810.^[6]

The evidence about easy chairs that can be derived from design books and price books is not that profound. In fact, little can be gleaned from them that cannot be inferred from surviving objects. The Journeymen Cabinet and Chair-Makers Philadelphia Book of Prices (1795) listed what was probably a standard form there during the late eighteenth century: A chair with, "plain feet" (straight legs with no reeding or term feet), "no low rails" (no stretchers), and a straight front seat rail. The close-stool options were a simple plank with a hole and either a "frame'd seat" or a loose seat. Cleats or battens to reinforce either seat also were optional. The Journeymen Cabinet and Chair Makers' Pennsylvania Book of Prices (1811) listed a few other choices, including a "slider under the frame, to draw out behind, with the pan," an ingenious feature that made it possible to empty the vessel without disturbing the chair's occupant. To avoid having the pan hit a rear stretcher when the slider was withdrawn, such chairs were made with "no lower back rail."^[7]

Another option for easy chairs found in many provincial English price books was a hinged back that could be set at various angles. This feature is described in the second edition of The Cabinet & Chair Makers' Norwich Book of Prices (1801) : "the back part is made to fall back with racks, and hinged to the back feet, the wings fast to the back, and work in the elbows." The "fall back" could be supplemented with a "foot board, hinged to the front rail, to raise with one rack." This was obviously a fully developed invalid's chair, specifically identified with nursing the ill and women immediately after childbirth.^[8]

Thomas Sheraton was the first British designer to comment on how easy chairs were used. In his description of a "tub" easy chair in The Cabinet Dictionary (1803) he noted that "a tub easy chair, stuffed all over, and is intended for sick persons, being both easy and warm; for the side wings coming quite forward keep out the cold air, which may be totally excluded from the person asleep, by laying some kind of covering over the whole chair." This chair was not quite what we think of as an easy chair, because it had a lower back. However, its D-shaped form was similar to that of a circular easy chair. Sheraton also illustrated a "hunter's chair," which was an easy chair with streamlined wings, or cheeks lacking scrolls or rolls, and a pull-out leg rest. The leg rest probably was for propping up the feet of those stricken with gout.^[9]

Sheraton was the only designer to describe specifically how easy chairs functioned; however, their use was implicit in the writing of others. On plate 15 in The Cabinet-Maker and Upholsterer's Guide (1794), George Hepplewhite illustrated what he called "a design for a Saddle Check [i.e., cheek], or easy chair; the construction and use of which is very apparent," as well as a design for a "Gouty Stool," which could be raised or lowered at both ends. His recommendation that such chairs "be covered with leather, horsehair; or have a linen case to fit over the canvas stuffing as is most usual and convenient" implies that they were to be covered with washable textiles. During the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, leather and haircloth often were used for covering dining chairs because of their washability.^[10]

Philadelphia probate inventories of the 1780—1810 period reveal other aspects of easy chair ownership, form, and use that have a direct impact on the interpretation of surviving frames with original upholstery foundations. Easy chairs were expensive and relatively rare, and other seating forms were preferred for lounging outside the confines of a bedroom. Rush-bottomed couches with comfortable, hair-stuffed mattresses were used in Pennsylvania throughout the eighteenth century. In 1790 merchant Philip Boehm had "1 Couch & Bed & Furniture" worth 40s. in the second-story back room of his house. Six years later Deborah Cordry had "One Couch and Couch Bed and Bolster" worth 10s.^[11] Another alternative to the easy chair may have been the Windsor settee or sofa with a hair-stuffed mattress. Distinguishing among inventory references to a Windsor settee and an upholstered settee or sofa can be difficult, unless significant qualifiers are present in the citation. A Windsor settee could be valued as much as a set of six Windsor chairs if the settee had a stitched hair mattress. The inventory of the wealthy merchant Peter LeMaigre, taken in 1794, included:

The mahogany easy chair and settee covered with blue moreen may have been standard forms with fixed upholstery and the chintz cover was probably for that settee. But the other two settees may well have been Windsors, even the one with the mattress and cover valued at £ 2.05.0. The green easy chair almost certainly was a `'Windsor, perhaps with a high raked back that permitted lounging. More clearly described were the "Green Windsor Sophia With Cushin" valued at £2.5.0 in the estate of Mary Brown in 1799 and the "Windsor easy Chair" valued at $2.50 in the 1806 inventory of Samuel Tatem.^[12]

Upholstered sofas were the most expensive seating form. Almost invariably, they were placed in parlors on the ground floor, whereas easy chairs were confined to bedchambers. The probate inventories surveyed for this study revealed only one indisputable reference to an easy chair in a ground-floor room. James Bringhurst, who died in 1810, had one easy chair in his south front parlor and "Covers for Easy Chairs & others" stored in the third-story south back room.^[13]

Philadelphia inventories of the 1770s frequently list old easy chairs with pans, reinforcing the idea that many examples originally were fitted with close stools. A number of euphemisms existed for indicating the presence of this fixture in a chair, including "close stool," "chamber chair," "night chair," and "stool chair," and almost any form of seating furniture could be adapted for a close stool by inserting a board with a hole to accommodate a pewter pan or ceramic pot. Among the most common were joined armchairs and corner chairs. Far rarer were slat-back armchairs made with a joined box frame to hold the pot and stools with hinged lids. Perhaps scarcest of all were Windsor chairs originally made with a pot-hole. The inventory of John Roberts, taken in 1805, listed a "Close-Stool windsor Chair &. Aparatus" appraised at 15s.; however, most Windsors were altered to accommodate close stools.^[14]

Considering the wide range of seating furniture that could have accommodated a close stool, there must have been compelling reasons for fitting easy chairs with them. After all, why put a close stool in an expensive upholstered chair that might easily be soiled as the close stool is used? The most plausible answer is that these chairs were used by those who required a padded, warm environment, and that the occupants of these chairs were often too sick or too feeble to walk to a close stool in another chair. It was easier to lift them out of the chair momentarily, remove the cushion or the slip seat over the pan or pot, assist them in rearranging their outer garments, and sit them down again. The pans were deep and could be tightly stoppered with turned wooden lids, allowing the contents to be emptied when convenient. Slider mechanisms, like the one described in The Pennsylvania Book of Prices (1811), simplified matters by making it possible to empty the pan without disturbing the person seated in the chair.

In those cases where easy chairs were virtually lived in, one may assume that the loose covers would have been made of washable materials like plain linen. In a letter regarding a case for an easy chair, the head of the Gillow cabinetmaking firm of Lancaster and London wrote, "We presume [the chair] will require some sort of washing cover which requires a good deal of nicety to make them fit well to such sort of chairs." Such covers were laboriously tailored and sewn by hand on the stuffed frame, hence the term "nicety" in the Gillow letter. Occasionally an inventory indicates that an easy chair or a sofa had two covers, a provision that may have had to do with seasonal changes but also allowed covers to be rotated for laundering.^[15]

Many Philadelphia inventories of the 1780—1820 period mention covers or cases for easy chairs, but few specify the textiles. Among fabrics mentioned were canvas, a coarse utilitarian linen; calico, an all-cotton cloth that usually was printed; and chintz, another variety of printed cotton. Calicoes and chintzes were sometimes glazed to seal in the colors; however, neither was as readily laundered as might be imagined. Their reputation for washability was more a polite fiction than a reality, because the glazes and printed inks did not hold up ,yell after repeated washings. Their genuine attraction to consumers was as a fashionable furnishing textile. Most often an easy chair cover was made of a printed cotton because it was covered en suite with bed fixtures, window curtains, and other chair covers in a bedroom. In 1793, for example, Jonathan Dickinson Sergeant's bedroom had "1 mahogany bedstead L7.10.0," "Chintz Bed Curtains, Window Curtains, Chair Bottoms, & easy Chair Cover. £25.0.0," "9 Cross backed Mahogany Chairs £11.5.0," "1 Easy Chair & Wash Stand L3.0.0," and "1 Mahogany Bureau .£2.5.0."^[16]

Furniture historian Peter Thornton has argued persuasively that easy chairs evolved from sick chairs and aristocratic sleeping chairs during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Surviving sick chairs, treatises on the arts and sciences, and medical literature of the 1770—1820 period reveal that easy chairs continued to be used as invalid's seats. A leather covered sick chair with a hinged back and footrest that was raised and lowered by arc-shaped ratchets was made for the Moravian Single Brothers House in Salem, North Carolina, during the late eighteenth century. It originally had loose covers that were attached to brass knobs on the sides. In its overall form and especially in its small wings, this chair strongly resembles leather covered easy chairs (many fitted with close stools) made in Bethlehem and other German settlements in Pennsylvania. Although occasionally interpreted as clumsy copies of Philadelphia chairs, they actually were based upon more refined continental designs. This style of upholstered chair with small wings or oreilles (ears) was almost certainly Germanic in origin. Two such chairs with ears were illustrated in a French design print of the 162Os: one was fitted with casters; the other had a hand crank that drove two wheels via gears under the seat, making the chair essentially a hand powered wheelchair. ^[17] As a seating form, the typical Louis XV sleeping chair with a hinged back and a seat that folded forward to become a footrest probably was introduced by German artisans working at the Louvre about 1720. It may be the immediate ancestor of the duchesse, a low lounge chair constructed in two or three parts.

Several similar "inventions" were popular in England during the Napoleonic Wars and probably were designed for officers who had been wounded. Rudolph Ackermann's The Repository of Arts, Literature, Commerce, Manufactures, Fashions, and Politics (1809—1828) included three: the "Royal Patent Invalid Chair" (1810), "Merlin's Mechanical Chair" (1811), and "Pocock's Reclining Patent Chair" (1813) . All were for "aged persons or invalids." "Merlin's" chair, named after the fashionable London cabinetmaker Merlin yon Luttich, had two hand cranks, gears, and wheels, as well as an adjustable back and footrest. American examples were made; however, not all had wings.^[18]

Many mechanical chairs were fitted with separate rests for the right and left leg. Although this feature may have answered the needs of wounded officers, it far more likely reflected that scourge of British upper-class males, "the gout." Doctors recognized that attacks were common among "people that live plentifully, have a good stomach, and drink strong liquors, if they don't use a proportionate degree of labor or exercise," a discreet way of indicating the aristocracy and the gentry. Attacks were widely feared, because "the fits, especially when they begin to return frequently, so incapacitate our limbs for action and necessary exercise, that the health and habit of the body and constitution suffer extremely." To counteract the shooting pains in the joints, the common practice was "to sweat the part" by " wrapping the part up in flannels." British satirical prints frequently depicted gouty aristocrats seated in easy chairs with a swaddled limb resting on a gout stool that could be adjusted to the position least painful to the sitter.^[19]

A final source that is extremely revealing is Charles White's A Treatise on the management of Pregnant and Lying‑In Women. White was an important medical theorist who recommended a number of advanced practices for the care of women during and after childbirth. Among those was elevating women lying in bed. White illustrated "an Iron Bedstead made at Birmingham, the invention of Doctor Vaughan, an ingenious Physician at Leicester. It serves every purpose of a bed chair or dozer." The head of the bedstead was raised and lowered with a crank, gear, and toothed ratchet. White added: "Mr. Alexander Brodie, Whitesmith near Temple Bar [in London], has obtained a patent for a contrivance something similar to this, which he calls his new invented Bedscrewn Lever calculated for the ease of sick and gouty people, or childbed women; which raises them from a lying to a sitting posture, and lowers them again so gently as hardly to be felt." White also noted that "a few hours after delivery, as soon as the patient has had a little rest, she should sit up in bed .... The patient should lie very high with her head and shoulders, and should sit up in bed when she takes her food, or as often as she suckles her child."^[20]

Philadelphia probate inventories frequently mention bed chairs. This as a small version of the upper half of an easy chair, mounted on a base frame with curved rails, and usually fitted with a hinged flap and toothed rack on the back. Such chairs were listed in the Philadelphia price books for 1796 and 1828.^[21] In the past scholars interpreted this as signifying props for reading in bed or perhaps for feeding invalids; however, White's treatise suggests that they may have been associated specifically with women who had recently given birth.

White also illustrated an easy chair with an adjustable back and footrest, "useful for lying in women, and sick persons." In the days immediately after delivery,

the patient should not only sit up often, but should every day get out of bed, staying up as long as she can without fatigue, and continuing it a little longer every day than she had done the day before. A very convenient easy chair has been invented, to which a foot-board is adapted, not only preserving the legs and feet from cold, but by the means of two straps, so contrived that the back of the chair may be depressed, and the footboard raised at pleasure. By means of this contrivance, if the patient is faint or fatigued with sitting up, she may be greatly relieved, and her posture made as easy as possible. As the chair runs upon castors, it may be readily moved, and by its assistance the patient may be enabled to continue a long time out of bed without inconvenience.

As his accompanying illustration revealed, this easy chair was not that different from a standard one. It had wings, enclosed scroll arms, and a tray footrest. Although White maintained that the strap-activated mechanisms were "not generally known," they had been standard features in aristocratic sleeping chairs and invalid chairs since the 1590s. This type of easy chair may have been mentioned in the diary of Philadelphia Quaker Elizabeth Drinker in 1799, "Sally [her pregnant daughter Sarah Downing] was all night in great distress, ye pain never quite off, sometimes on the bed, but most of the night in the Easy Chair as it is called." This chair may have been the more utilitarian model that had a U-shaped void in the seat, handgrips, and stirrups. Such "midwives' chairs" or "birthing stools" survive in Europe in some numbers, and they often have padded wings and arms.^[22]

One may summarize all these scattered references by suggesting a fairly specific role for the easy chair in eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century households. Kaye's suggestion that they were being used as lounge chairs by healthy younger people is difficult, if not impossible, to accept. In Philadelphia, at least, the public entertaining spaces were the front and back parlors on the ground floor, and the seating forms there almost universally consisted of side chairs, armchairs, settees, and sofas. Easy chairs were largely relegated to bedchambers, and there were strong motivations for fitting these expensive forms with close stools and placing them in secluded rooms. The inevitable conclusion is that easy chairs with or without close stools were intended for nursing those in poor health. This idea is buttressed by the prescriptive literature as well as by the strong identity between standard easy chairs and those with special equipment for the care of invalids. The loose covers or secondary covers that most easy chairs had may have related to fashionable suits of textile furnishings, but the practical concerns for washing and cleaning them were well recognized during the period too.

Why then were easy chairs used in bedchambers? Because they formed part of a complex for nursing, one that also included beds augmented with bed chairs, couches or daybeds, close stools, gout stools, and perhaps bed warmers and bedpans, or urinals. Such a complex was of obvious utility in caring for the aged; lying in women and gouty men also would have made use of it on a regular basis. The eventual disappearance of this complex in the later nineteenth century probably reflected the increased safety and reliability of public hospitals and clinics. Such furniture may have persisted in rural America until much later.