Only twelve American board-seated turned chairs made before 1720 are known. The term “board-seated” refers to a thin, planed board, or panel, with feathered edges that engage grooves plowed in the inner edges of a chair’s seat rungs or “lists.” Sometimes the board is held in the front and rear seat rungs only, but in most surviving chairs, the seat board is held in all four rungs. The seat board is thick enough to be fairly rigid but thin enough to flex slightly under the sitter’s weight; usually the optimum thickness at the center is about half an inch. In view of the fact that hundreds of early American turned chairs with vegetable fiber seats are known, it would seem that board-seated versions were infrequently made, and that special skills were required to produce them. This article will examine the board-seated genre within the context of traditional chair making and present theories about the European origins of various examples.[1]
Turned chairs with board seats occupied an anomalous position in the woodworking hierarchy. Although they may have been considered equal in status to simple joined chairs, most of the American turned chairs with board seats appear to have been preserved because of their historical associations rather than their aesthetics. Of the twelve known examples, three came down in the families of Pilgrim leaders, two belonged to influential seventeenth-century clerics (Rev. John Eliot [1604–1690] of Roxbury, Massachusetts, the minister who translated the Bible into the Algonquian language, and Rev. Cotton Mather [1662–1728] of Boston), and one reputedly descended in the prominent Fauntleroy and Lee families of Virginia.[2]
Board-seated chairs raise additional interpretative quandaries. Although they constitute a subset of turned chairs, the structural peculiarities of certain board-seated variants often deviate from accepted notions of traditional post-and-rung chair construction. Within the cohort of traditional seating, post-and-rung chairs included seating with shaved components (otherwise known as plain chairs) and seating with turned components. Both of these variants feature socket joints assembled by driving dry tenons into wet mortises. Before 1500 some chairs combined joinery, turning, shaved work, and latticework of the sort associated with casement frames, as seen in the drawing Men Shoveling Chairs (fig. 7). Board seats, therefore, may be a vestigial structure within the post-and-rung chair tradition, dating from a period when the boundaries between seating types were blurred.[3]
Early British Chairs
British woodworkers had produced board-seated turned chairs centuries before the first colonists settled in North America. The chair illustrated in figures 1–3 probably dates as early as the fourteenth century, having reputedly descended in the family of Scottish military leader William Wallace (d. 1305). The post diameters are large, the frame has suffered losses due to insect infestation, and some parts have been replaced. The side view (fig. 2) shows that the lowest surviving side rail into which the original plain spindles fit was not on the same level as the front and rear seat rails. While most of the spindles visible in the rear view (fig. 3) are replacements, they indicate that some arrangement of turnings was present in the back. The most important observation that can be gleaned from these images is that the seat boards were secured only in the front and rear seat rails and were, therefore, probably thick and inflexible (fig. 4).[4]
Wallace’s chair strongly resembles a coeval English example referred to as “King Stephen’s throne” (fig. 5). King Stephen reigned from 1135 to 1154, but most scholars date the chair 1300 to 1400. The most striking thing about this object is that it appears metallic. With their straight passages and small bands, the turned parts resemble cast metal tubes connected by rings or junctions. This was probably the maker’s intent, because the prototypes for such chairs were bronze or ebony-and-ivory thrones, typically assembled from many small parts. According to some nineteenth-century antiquarians, “King Stephen’s throne” retained traces of gilding and red paint, a color possibly intended to suggest polished bronze.[5]
All the principal joints of the chair illustrated in figure 5 are through-drilled. The board seat is composed of two heavy oak planks held in grooves in the front and rear seat rails. Neither of the side rails is at the same level as the seat boards. Surprisingly, the front and rear seat rails lack rectangular tenons, which would have prevented those rails from rotating in their mortises and releasing the seat boards. The maker may have felt that the thick seat boards were set deep enough in their grooves to resist rotation. That could explain why he apparently neglected to use trunnels (wooden pegs) to secure the seat rungs in their mortises.[6]
The chairs illustrated in figures 1–5 are important in understanding the chronology and development of board-seated furniture. Because they differ from turned seating depicted in Netherlandish paintings from the 1400s, the William Wallace, King Stephen, and associated chairs may represent index artifacts for a peculiarly English chair-making tradition. The “Bishop Ridley chair” at Pembroke College, Cambridge (fig. 6), appears to be in this same line of development. Nicholas Ridley (ca. 1500–1555) was a Reformation cleric allied with the radical Protestants Thomas Cranmer, archbishop of Canterbury, and Hugh Latimer, bishop of Worcester.[7]
Like King Stephen’s throne, the Ripley chair has a board seat held in the front and rear seat rails and through-tenoned horizontal members, some of which are back-wedged. Accepting the chair as dating from the bishop’s lifetime is somewhat problematic because of the reels and intermittent spherical turnings. This style of turning usually is thought to date from the 1660s, but the heavy finials and old-fashioned seat construction tend to support a sixteenth-century date.[8]
Early Dutch Chairs
Stools with a different type of board-seat construction are depicted in the fifteenth-century Netherlandish drawing Men Shoveling Chairs (Scupstoel) (fig. 7). This allegory of social unrest jumbles together chairs reserved for the elite with peasants’ stools. Among the seating forms shown are stools with plank seats and stake feet, folding stools of the sort associated with church dignitaries, and a chair with shaved posts, a rush seat, and a joined back in-filled with latticework. The most important objects represented in the drawing are three-post, turned stools with board seats. To trap the seat board on all three sides, the rails of three-post stools had to be set at the same level. This created a problem, because the tenons entering each post intersected with each other. Makers overcame this problem by using a round tenon at one end of each seat rail and a square tenon at the other end (fig. 8). On each post the smaller round tenon passed through the larger rectangular tenon, creating an interlocking joint. Usually, the round tenons were pinned to prevent them from withdrawing from their mortises. In addition to creating a stronger joint, the rectangular tenons prevented the seat rails from rotating under the weight of the sitter and causing the seat board to slip out of place.
To construct stools of this type, makers had to be precise when chopping and drilling their mortises. Assembling the frame also required considerable dexterity, since the maker had to rotate the frame while hammering each joint in succession. If any tenon was driven much farther in than the other two, the entire structure would bind or one of the posts would split under the stress.
Although three-posted stools often appear in Netherlandish art, furniture historians have either ignored these seating forms or posited that they were the antecedents of chairs. Under that “evolutionary” model, the rear post of stools rose higher over time, eventually providing a backrest for the sitter. It is more likely that fully developed stools and chairs with extended back posts were made simultaneously. The chair shown in figure 9 has a horizontal crest curved to conform to the sitter’s back and two diagonal struts that function as braces. On other examples, the crest has a deeper curve and extends farther forward to provide cantilevered armrests. The three-post format had advantages because it was stable on uneven floors.[9]
During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, armchairs were among the most comfortable and prestigious seating forms. Some provision for arms is seen in two eighteenth-century South African chairs based on Netherlandish examples made two centuries earlier (figs. 10, 11). The rear posts of these derivatives have paddlelike crests with diagonal struts, and the arms are continuous, bent slats that are pinned to the rear post and tenoned into the front posts. The abstract turnings of the posts, consisting of long, inswept collars, are similar to those on the chair illustrated in figure 9. That chair represents another variant within the tradition, having a broader crest, crooked struts worked with a draw shave, and turned arms. All these chairs (figs. 9-11) have blind joints at the seat rails, presumably with a rectangular tenon at one end of each seat rail and a round tenon at the other end.
Another early type of board-seated construction occurs on a chair with a straight turned crest braced with diagonal struts and turned arms that fall on a diagonal to extensions of the two front posts (fig. 12). This object displays a technically sophisticated version of the intersecting tenon system (figs. 13-15). The shoulders of the rectangular tenons are sawn at an angle to conform to the shape of the posts, and the round tenons are back-wedged, an alternative to pinning. The shaped shoulders also function as a redundant antirotation device. This precise execution and overconstruction is reminiscent of Germanic work of the period. After all, rectangular tenons without conforming shoulders would have held as well, and the seat board did not have to fit so tightly in the corners.
In this chair, the complexities inherent in assembling a three-post stool were multiplied. The maker had to work his way around the frame, gradually driving together three intersecting joints without causing any to bind while simultaneously joining the arms to the crest rail and the two front posts. Exactly how he accomplished this task is unclear, but the long, tapered turnings at the front of the arms suggest that the maker began by assembling the entire back with its crest rail and diagonal struts (no mean feat in and of itself). He then could have driven the rear tenons of the arms completely into the crest rail and proceeded to assemble the seat frame and stretchers, while forcing the front tenons of the arms into the posts.
Plotting the locations of the stretchers was another problem. The maker of the chair illustrated in figure 12 set them at different heights. This provided structural integrity but denied bilateral symmetry. While both side stretchers enter their respective front posts at about the same level, they enter the rear post one above the other.
The Welsh Tradition
Most of the British board-seated, turned chairs that survive have histories of ownership in Wales. Some have seat frames constructed with rectangular tenons intersected by round tenons, whereas others have seat rails with intersecting large and small round tenons (fig. 15). Both types of joints appear in chairs that are virtually identical, so no chronological or developmental priority may be assigned to either variant.
The chairs illustrated in figures 16 and 17 are relatively plain, having straight rear posts and heavy turned horizontal crest rails. Both have two arms set at different angles on each side and spindles between the seat rails and the stretchers. An important stylistic and structural detail is the use of turned ledges on the rear post, which serve as seats for the diagonal struts supporting the crest of each chair. The vigorous turnings, including the heavy urns on the front posts, are squarely in the mannerist design tradition, and it is difficult to believe that such objects could have been made in Wales much before 1560. These chairs also have applied buttons of various forms and punchwork in some moldings. They continue the practice of placing the three stretchers at different levels, without reference to bilateral symmetry. These chairs represent a standard model. Other versions feature complex superstructures that were labor-intensive, expensive options. The most elaborate chairs were preserved as relics of departed patriarchs and matriarchs.
The chair illustrated in figure 18 has a history of ownership in Ty’n-y-cymer, Glamorganshire. Its understructure is not all that different from those of the previous Welsh examples, but its crest is ornamented with a superimposed cage of interlocked posts, rails, and spindles. Connected to this cage are two lateral structures that resemble the wings or cheeks of early-eighteenth-century easy chairs. This elaborate framework may have been draped in winter. Features not previously encountered include gouge carving on the flanges of turnings and free rings made from the same piece of wood as the spindles they surround. The multiple bands on the posts and the crest rail appear on some of the chairs in Men Shoveling Chairs (fig. 7), suggesting a connection between this Welsh chair-making school and the late medieval Netherlandish tradition that preceded it; however, many of the other turnings are well-defined renaissance forms.
The extraordinarily complex fabrication and assembly problems posed by these Welsh chairs suggest that they may be earlier than some related stools. Although the chairs may have provided greater comfort, their backs forced the user to sit upright, leaving little room for relaxation. As long as the principal support for the back rail was an extension of the rear leg, this posture was difficult to avoid.
To create layback, makers began using a large horizontal rail immediately above the seat. This allowed them to set the back posts at an angle, providing additional comfort for the sitter. As the chair illustrated in figure 19 suggests, this design often made construction more complex. The maker of this example probably began by assembling the seat frame using the interlocking round-tenon system described above. Then he began driving the joints connecting the lower arms to the front posts and large horizontal rail, the diagonal struts to the low rear post and large horizontal rail, and the large horizontal rail to the low rear posts. The maker performed this work gradually and sequentially to keep the joints from binding. Having completed the undercarriage, he could begin installing the back. He drove the arms into the upper back posts, inserted the big back spindles into the frame, maneuvered the back posts and spindles into their mortises in the large horizontal rail, and forced the front tenons of the arms into their mortises in the front posts. The high degree of skill required to bore the mortises of this chair accurately and to assemble its frame attest to the sophistication of the board-seat design tradition.[10]
The diagonal struts supporting the large crest rail of the armchair illustrated in figure 18 feature bilaterally symmetrical balusters with a thin reel at the waist, a turning sequence repeated on the lower back pillars of a related chair (fig. 20). Although the chair illustrated in figure 20 has two horizontal rails above the seat, its back is framed with a series of medium-weight spindles rather than two large outer posts. The two rails are nearly identical in size and diameter, and the superstructure with cheeks or wings is higher relative to the seat and the back than that of the chair in figure 18. The maker chose to retain a primary and secondary pair of arms, but he set one pair between the structural rail and the front posts and the other between the crest rail and the front posts. Consequently, both pairs of arms are set at the same angle. Embellishments on the chair illustrated in figure 20 include free rings, applied buttons, and gougework. With its pronounced urns and balusters, the turned ornament of this example has stronger renaissance overtones than that of the chair shown in figure 18.[11]
Three-post chairs with high superstructures tend to tip over if the sitter shifts too much weight to either side. At some point, makers introduced a four-post plan. A striking example of the latter form has a history of ownership in Tregib, Llandeilo, Carmarthenshire (fig. 21), and appears to be from the same shop tradition that produced several three-post chairs (fig. 22) including one acquired in the 1750s for the president of Harvard University. Like all of the seating in this group, the chair illustrated in figure 21 has little layback despite having a low structural rail mounted just above the seat. The front posts of these chairs also lack pommels, or handgrips, a feature found on many other examples of board-seat furniture. The chair illustrated in figure 21 deviates from the group in having a back framed with heavy outer posts rather than several medium-size spindles. The only renaissance turnings are the heavy urns on the front posts and a few minor ball-and-reel sequences.[12]
The simple but distinctive great chair illustrated in figure 23 was probably made for the church of St. Marnarch in Lanreath, Cornwall. Unlike most turned great chairs, this example has posts braced by stretchers set just below the seat rails rather than near the floor. The maker’s use of extremely heavy stock for the posts may have been dictated by a concern for stability. The turnings of this chair relate directly to those on two similar American examples. Pertinent elements include the slightly indented ball turning on the front and rear posts and a barrel-like turning on the back spindles with indented ends and a central incised band.[13]
The Board-Seat Tradition in America
The American chairs that relate most closely to the St. Marnarch example represent the work of two different makers. One descended in the Foote family of Wethersfield, Connecticut (figs. 24, 25), and the other reputedly belonged to Jacob Strycker, a German who lived on western Long Island near New York (fig. 26). The earliest member of the Foote family was a turner named Nathaniel (ca. 1593–1644).[14]
At this time, it is impossible to determine if the makers of the Foote and Strycker chairs trained in the same regional tradition that produced the St. Marnarch chair and other related board-seat forms. The backs of the American examples have greater layback (fig. 25) than their British antecedents, and the turnings on the Foote and Strycker chairs are more conservative than those on the St. Marnarch chair, although still based almost entirely in the renaissance tradition.
A straight-post chair in the same style as the Foote and Strycker examples suggests how this board-seated tradition may have evolved in America (fig. 27). Although it has turned ornament similar to that on the preceding examples (figs. 24, 26), the chair illustrated in figure 27 does not have a horizontal back rail set just above the seat. This suggests that the same shops that made chairs with such rails also produced seating without them.[15]
The Plymouth Tradition
The most widely published American board-seat chairs were made in Plymouth, Massachusetts. One reputedly belonged to William Bradford (1589/90–1657) (fig. 28), one to William Brewster (1567–1644) (fig. 29), and one to Myles Standish (1584–1656) (fig. 30). Skeptics have decried these histories for years, partly because other Pilgrim provenances have proven specious and partly because of the existence of replicas made over the years to satisfy the cult of ancestor worship surrounding the Pilgrims. Many Pilgrim descendants owned or own artifacts that reputedly arrived on the Mayflower, but most of these objects were first owned by later generations of the families in question. All of the chairs in the Plymouth group were once considered part of that ship’s cargo, but their American woods refute that theory. The chairs may, however, represent the work of an immigrant craftsman. If that is true, then their histories of ownership by immigrant Pilgrim patriarchs are probably correct.
Several British and Netherlandish chairs can be interpreted as antecedents or cognates for the Bradford, Brewster, and Standish seating. The woodworking tradition encompassing the Plymouth chairs probably emanated from London, where Dutch influence was strong. The Ridley chair (fig. 6) suggests that turned chairs with board seats were being made in that city by the mid-1550s. A chair that reputedly belonged to Dutch humanist Desiderius Erasmus (ca. 1466–1536) supports that theory (fig. 31). He visited England repeatedly between 1499 and 1517 and was often the guest of Sir Thomas More (1478–1535). Presumably Erasmus obtained the chair during his unhappy residence as a lecturer at Cambridge from 1510 to 1514, or perhaps earlier during one of his visits at More’s house near London. The Erasmus chair is one of the few English four-post examples without a low structural back rail that can be associated with southeastern England.[16]
Another English chair has features rarely seen outside the Plymouth group (fig. 32). Its front and back posts are canted, but all of its horizontal components remain parallel to the floor (fig. 33). This design allowed the maker to produce layback without using a low structural back rail, but it did not provide the same level of comfort. The muscles of a sitter’s back and legs cannot relax as long as the seat remains level. A cushion at the front may have alleviated some tension by slightly elevating the sitter’s legs. The vasiform turning vocabulary of this chair is closely related to that of the Plymouth examples and has almost no medieval antecedents.
Perhaps the most important cognate for the Plymouth group is a small side chair likely of Netherlandish origin or made by a Dutch turner who resided in London or another Channel port (fig. 34). Turned side chairs rarely survive, and those with board seats are exceptionally rare. The turnings on the chair illustrated in figure 34 are far more detailed and refined in concept and execution than those on the Plymouth chairs (figs. 28-30). The deeply incised accents and sharp-edged, elegant flanges (figs. 35, 36) are indices of high-quality work, where the turner was pushing his design to the limits of the material. Many of the thinner edges have chipped off, possibly because the cherry became brittle with age—a characteristic of most fruitwoods. Dutch turners often made chairs of cherry, with the intention of painting them black to resemble ebony.[17]
The William Bradford chair (fig. 28) is the most intact example in the Plymouth group, and it has subtle refinements that are not immediately evident. The side rails of the seat are angled, dropping about one-half inch from front to back, but the front and rear posts are upright. When combined with the use of a cushion, this feature would have made the chair more comfortable than a comparable example with seat rails oriented parallel to the floor. The Bradford chair maker turned long tapered stops on the ends of his vasiform spindles so he could trim and fit them in a seamless fashion and turned the spindles in batches of five different heights based on their intended location in the frame. The Brewster and Standish chairs (figs. 29, 30) originally looked very much like the Bradford example. The latter chair is the only one retaining its original upper turned back rail.
All of the board-seated chairs in the Plymouth group have interlocking rectangular and round tenons where the seat rails join each post. The tops and bottoms of the mortises are rounded, suggesting that the maker used a brace fitted with a piercer to bore holes at each end and a mortising chisel to chop out the waste between. After turning the seat rails, he sawed the cheeks of the tenons to make the upper and lower edges conform, approximately, to the bored ends of the mortises. The maker of the English chair illustrated in figure 32 followed the same practice.
All of the Plymouth chairs appear to be from the same shop tradition, if not by the same hand. The turnings display minor variations, but that is to be expected in early seating of this caliber and complexity. The spindle profiles of the Bradford and Brewster chairs are virtually identical, a fact somewhat obscured by turnings on the latter example, which were shaved flat on their front faces at a later date.
The worn front stretcher of the Bradford chair provides evidence that all of the Plymouth examples were assembled using wet-and-dry construction. Both ends of the stretcher are almost perfect half-sections of the tenons secured in the mortises. The tenons have compression marks that match the spoon-bit kerfs of their mortises. These marks occurred as the wet posts dried, shrinking around the tenons. The tenons were probably dry and slightly oversized at the time of assembly.
A slat-back armchair (fig. 37) recently discovered by furniture scholar Donald P. White III is the only other example from this shop tradition, which is surprising considering the large number of surviving turned chairs made by Ephriam Tinkham (1649–1713) of nearby Middleborough. The slat-back armchair descended in the Brewster family of Plymouth and New London County, Connecticut, until the late eighteenth century, when a member of the Roach family of New London County acquired the piece. Not only does the slat-back chair have finials similar to those on the Bradford and Brewster examples, but it also retains its abbreviated pommels. The pommels on the Brewster chair are too fragmentary to determine if they resembled those on the slat-back example.[18]
The Boston Tradition
A chair with urn-and-flame finials (fig. 38) that match those on many other examples of Boston seating serves as an index for understanding the board-seat tradition in that city. This imposing object descended in the Tufts family of Medford, Massachusetts, about five miles northeast of Boston. One of the earliest turners active in Boston was Thomas Edsall (1588–1676), a London-trained craftsman who immigrated in 1635. Given his dominance of the turning trade over the following forty years, he may have introduced many of the ornamental details found on later Boston seating.[19]
The Tufts chair is obviously the product of a sophisticated, established tradition. Although its turnings differ from those of the Brewster, Bradford, and Standish chairs, the construction of the Tufts example shares several details with the Plymouth group. The maker turned his spindles in different heights, so that the proportions of the frame could be adjusted, and set the side rails of the seat at an angle to produce a slight fall from front to back.
A related Boston chair (fig. 39) reputedly belonged to Rev. John Eliot (1603–1690), the minister of the church in Roxbury, Massachusetts, who translated the Bible and other religious texts into the Algonquian language. Like the Tufts chair, Eliot’s example has seat rail joints wherein a rectangular tenon is pierced by a round tenon, a board seat set in grooves on all four sides, and built-in seat fall. Despite these structural affinities, the Eliot chair is clearly by a different maker. It has two upper crest rails and only one stretcher at each side. The somewhat straight-sided turnings of the Eliot chair are repeated on a fragmentary example by the same maker (fig. 40).[20]
A high chair (fig. 41) that reputedly belonged to Rev. Increase Mather (1639–1723) of Boston also appears to be a product of that city’s board-seat tradition. The seat board is missing, but the rails have grooves cut on the inside edges and join the posts in much the same manner as those on the Tufts and Eliot chairs (figs. 38, 39). Some question exists about the age of the top back rail, which is loose in its mortises. The long, tapered posts and spindles, accented only by fine score lines, seem austere, but the forms may have been dictated by considerations of hygiene. Apparently this battered or pylon format was common in high chairs. A similar design can be observed in the only known southern chair with a board seat (fig. 42).
A board-seated great chair associated with Rev. James Keith (1643–1719) of Bridgewater in Plymouth County (fig. 43) may have been made in Boston, but it has no known cognates. At first glance, the finials appear to be related to those of the Plymouth group, but the turnings differ in several details. The Keith chair may date from the early eighteenth century and is, perhaps, the latest American example in the board-seat tradition.
The dating, technology, and stylistic progression of board-seated turned chairs is not entirely secure and requires far more research in European sources. Nevertheless, it is clear that the twelve American examples that survive have an ancient lineage. They may seem forbidding and cagelike to modern observers, but in their time, these chairs were regarded as thronelike enclosures that dignified their sitters and alluded to a tradition reaching back to the Assyrians if not the Egyptians.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
For assistance with this article, the authors thank Pauline Agius, James Austin, Peggy Baker, Gerry and Randy Bennett, Robert J. Bitondi, Kerry P. Brennan, Allan Breed, Rosalind Caird, Nancy Carlisle, Bill Cotton, Gerry Cotton, Richard Dearlove, J. Donovan, Peter Follansbee, the late Benno Forman, the late Christopher Gilbert, Tara Gleason, Donald Hare, Frank Kravic, Sandra Lackenby, Joshua Lane, Beverly Johnson Lucas, Richard C. Malley, Eddy Nicholson, Lionel Reynolds, Violet Riegel, Dr. Richard D. Ryder, Adrienne Sage, Erin Schleigh, Rev. L. J. Smith, Robert Blair St. George, Frances Gruber Stafford, Susan Stubbs, Michael Taviner, Roy Thompson, the Van Horne family, Donald P. White III, Sioned Williams, and Philip Zea.
