My recent article on furniture in the Dietrich American Foundation is now available on line. It can be seen here.

I want to make a correction to the previous post about the over-size high-back Windsor armchair in the Foundations collection. It has been on long-term loan to Stenton where I examined it several years ago. It was a cloudy winter day and I did not take the chair outside where there would have been only slightly better light to inspect the chair. The two short spindles behind the arm supports have the same darkened varnish the mahogany arms and arm supports have, not the later black paint seen on the rest of the chair. I could not see any traces of the original green paint on or around the short spindles. I speculated then that the short spindles were made of mahogany. I didn’t understand what purpose there would have been for the maker to use mahogany the short spindles. I recently had the opportunity to examine the arm chair again on a warm, bright sunny day. This time, close scrutiny of the spindles in sunlight showed them to be made of hickory like the other long spindles, explaining the mystery of why relatively minor elements of the chair would be made of an exotic wood species.

Here are several more images of the high-back Windsor armchair.