In this pedagogical film, Harvard University Teaching Fellows Shireen Hamza, Wythe Marschall, Samantha Payne, and Peter Pellizzari use seemingly disparate objects as an alternative labeling strategy to introduce the complex histories of a Jamaican mahogany windsor chair that conventional museum text would traditionally omit. Materials of Empire was created for the Tangible Things class team taught in Fall 2017 by Professor Laurel Thatcher Ulrich and Curator of the Collection of Historical Scientific Instruments Dr. Sara J. Schechner at Harvard University.