Windsor Side Chair
Robert & Andrew McKim
Richmond, Virginia, 1800
Poplar, maple, and hickory

In addition to producing Windsor side chairs with flat serpentine crest rails, the firm of Robert & Andrew McKim also made “square bac,” side chairs. Featuring a thin, straight, crest rail and dramatically flared stiles, this chair is one of pair labeled by the McKims and dated March 22, 1800. The crest rail, stiles, and seat are decorated with deeply cut scratch beading, and the bamboo legs represent a popular, less expensive option to more ornately turned legs.

Southern Windsor Furniture
Windsor chair making blossomed in Great Britain after 1720 but was slow to develop in the colonies. The first known advertisement for American-made Windsor furniture did not appear until 1745, when London-trained upholsterer Richard Caulton announced to the citizens of Williamsburg, Virginia, that he could make or repair Windsor chairs. Windsor chair making grew dramatically in many northern urban centers during the third quarter of the eighteenth century. In spite of Caulton's advertisement, the trade expanded in the South only after the Revolution.

By 1800, a number of southern cities were home to communities of specialized Windsor furniture makers. In addition to chairs, they produced related forms such as settees and cradles. These artisans thrived for several decade, until increasing competition from newly arrived artisans in imported furniture forced many to relocate or to change careers in the 1810s and 1820s.

Furniture historians have traditionally viewed Windsor chairs as a cheap, utilitarian form of seating, yet probate records indicate that Windsors frequently were owned by the wealthy in the South. Even in the finest households, stylish Windsors were used in public spaces like halls, parlors, passages, and dining rooms. Windsor seating furniture also commonly was used on porches and piazzas.

Windsor Side Chair
Rockwood & Grubb
Richmond, Virginia, ca. 1810
Maple and hickory

Although bearing the label of the chair-making partnership of Curtis Rockwood and Joseph Grubb, this painted side chair was made after the dissolution of the brief partnership. That “& Grubb” was scratched out on the label and a handwritten “C.” was added before the name Rockwood corroborates this supposition. Also, “Chair Makers” has been made singular. The chair or the label probably was left over from the earlier joint venture.

While little is known about Grubb, Rockwood ran a prolific Richmond turning shop. In addition to building his own finished forms, Rockwood may have provided turned chair and table legs for his kinsman, James Rockwood, a cabinetmaker in Richmond. The two briefly were partners in 1820. This chair descended in the Tyler family of Charles City County. It has the modest decoration commonly applied to the crest rails of coastal southern Windsor chairs after 1810.

Windsor Side Chair
Probably Petersburg, Virginia, 1800-1820
Hickory, maple, and tulip poplar
Bequest of Miss Martha B. D. Spotswood
Catalog no. 48

Before the Revolutionary War, the Virginia gentry imported almost all of their Windsor chairs from Philadelphia, New York, and, to a lesser extent, Britain. By the 1790s, southern cities like Petersburg were beginning to produce Windsors in considerable numbers. One of a set of six that descended in the Lemoine and Spotswood families of Petersburg, this bow-back chair is typical of Windsors produced in Virginia urban centers. It closely resembles Philadelphia forms, which continued to be imported in quantity even after the southern Windsor trade became well established.
The oxidized green paint that remains on the chair covers traces of the original ocher with red trim. Although the maker of this chair is not recorded, it is nearly identical to documented examples produced in the Petersburg “WINDSOR CHAIR MANUFACTORY” of Joel Brown, who in 1807 publicly noted his stock of four hundred finished chairs.

Writing Chair
Attributed to Robert & Andrew McKim
Richmond, Virginia, 1800-1805
Yellow pine, tulip poplar, oak, maple, and hickory
Catalog no. 47

Southern Windsor chair makers also made specialty chairs such as “writing,” or “secretary,” chairs. The strong similarity to a labeled writing chair built in 1802 by “ANDREW & ROBT. M'KIM, / At their Shop just below the Capitol, / RICHMOND,” indicates that this imposing example was also made in that shop. Now painted red, it was originally green.

The chair descended in the Blanton family of Cumberland County, about thirty miles west of Richmond in the James River valley. One of its earliest owners was probably the wealthy planter and landowner James Blanton (1796-1852), whose initials, “I B,” are branded on the bottom of the seat. As residents of the upper James River valley, the Blantons were typical in their choice of fashionable furniture made in nearby Richmond.

Cradle
Petersburg or Richmond, Virginia, 1800-1820
Tulip poplar and hickory with yellow pine and oak
Gift of E. Charles and Cynthia Beyer in memory of Carrie Cole Lane Geddy
Catalog no. 177

After 1800, many Windsor chair makers in Richmond and Petersburg, Virginia, augmented their income by making and selling other painted, spindle-fashioned furniture forms. An 1817 advertisement by the Petersburg firm of Matthews & Brown offered Windsor “Bedsteads, Cradles, Gigg-Seats, Writing Chairs, and every other article in their line.” This cradle is one of the few surviving examples of these other Windsor wares. It probably was first owned by Williamsburg merchant Roscow Cole, whose neoclassical brick house still stands on Market Square.

The open wooden structure of a Windsor cradle was conceived as an inexpensive frame for the textiles associated with infant bedding. On the present example, a detachable hoop at the center was designed to be slipped through a casing at the front of a curtain assembly that enclosed the head of the bed. According to The Workwoman's Guide (1838), such covers were designed to “guard the infant from the sun, or from draughts of air, while asleep, and to give an air of comfort and cleanliness.”

Windsor Side Chair
Robert & Andrew McKim
Richmond, Virginia, 1795-1805
Maple, oak, and tulip poplar
Catalog no. 46

Richmond, Virginia, supported at least a dozen documented Windsor makers between 1790 and 1820, among them the firm of Robert & Andrew McKim, who labeled this fan-back side chair. Partners from 1795 to 1805, the McKim brothers ran a prolific chair making operation.

Like many southern Windsor chair makers, the McKims emulated Philadelphia forms, which continued to be shipped to the South in quantities into the early nineteenth century. The leg and spindle profile seen here, along with the use of small cut nails to pin the stiles and central spindles to the crest rails, echo Philadelphia practices, which also came to the South via migrating northern Windsor furniture makers.

Windsor Side Chair
Hobday & Seaton
Richmond, Virginia, 1808-1812
Maple, hickory, and tulip poplar
Catalog no. 49

This Virginia Windsor chair also emulates eastern Pennsylvania craft models. The form and date of production document how Virginia artisans closely followed new developments in Philadelphia Windsor design and incorporated the changes into their work. Here the serpentine crest rail and the bow-back form popular at the turn of the nineteenth century have been abandoned in favor of the newer rod-back format with its slatlike crest rail.

The chair bears the label of John Hobday and Leonard Seaton, whose shop was located “on the Cross street leading to the Governor's[,] Richmond.” Their partnership, which began in 1808, typifies a pattern in the coastal South. Regional Windsor makers increasingly pooled their resources to cope with the rising costs of operating a business and the growing competition posed by imported goods. However, in the South, these partnerships, including that of Hobday and Seaton, were often short-lived.