As noted in the last post, Windsor chairmakers in Philadelphia were making highchairs shortly after they began producing high-back Windsor armchairs in the mid-1740s. No highchairs modeled on the earliest Philadelphia high-back Windsors with plain crest rails and shaved arm supports are known to have survived, nor have any highchairs been discovered with Thomas Gilpin's … Continue reading The First Philadelphia Windsor Highchairs
A Philadelphia High-back Windsor Highchair
The next Windsor form in chronological order by date in the Dietrich American Foundation collection is also the last Windsor acquired by H. Richard Dietrich Jr (1938-2007). High-back Windsor high chair, Philadelphia, Penn., 1755-1765. Artist unknown. Yellow poplar seat, maple legs, stretchers, and arm supports, hickory spindles and arm rail, oak crest. H. 40, seat 21 3/4; W. … Continue reading A Philadelphia High-back Windsor Highchair
Windsors In Philadelphia
I recently wrapped up another article on furniture in the Dietrich American Foundation that will appear in the next issue of the magazine "Incollect Magazine, Antiques + Art + Design" (formerly "Antiques & Fine Art). The article features the Foundation's American Windsor furniture, a small but carefully chosen and notable grouping that is a significant … Continue reading Windsors In Philadelphia
John Widdifield, Joiner
John Widdifield (1673-1720) was an English furnituremaker who immigrated to Philadelphia in first years of the eighteenth century. He was listed in William Macpherson Hornor’s Blue Book: Philadelphia Furniture in the “…astonishing roll comprising nearly one hundred” woodworkers working in in the Delaware Valley between 1682 and 1722. Cathryn McElroy in her Master’s Thesis, Furniture of the Philadelphia Area: … Continue reading John Widdifield, Joiner
Red Cedar in Philadelphia
I had a question about the spice box in the last post and why surviving red cedar furniture from the Delaware River Valley is so rare. It's true that there are very few extant objects with red cedar used as a primary wood species made in the Delaware River Valley during the eighteenth century. Juniperus … Continue reading Red Cedar in Philadelphia
In Proportion to the Trouble 