Side Chair
Maker
Herter Brothers
(American, active 1864 - 1906)
Date1881-1882
MediumGilded hard maple, walnut, ash, inlaid ivory, modern upholstery
DimensionsOverall: 34 1/8 × 16 7/8 × 19in. (86.7 × 42.9 × 48.3cm)
ClassificationsFURNISHINGS
Credit LineMuseum Purchase with Funds from the Sarah T. Norris Fund
Terms
Object number82.41
On View
Not on viewCollections
Copyright<a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/"><img alt="Creative Commons License" style="border-width:0" src="https://i.creativecommons.org/l/by-nc/4.0/80x15.png" /></a><br />This work is licensed under a <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/">Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License</a>.
Label TextPerhaps more than any other form, reception chairs reveal the sophisticated design talents of Christian Herter and his associates during the 1870s and early 1880s. Because such chairs were lightweight and easy to move, they were popular in European and American drawing rooms, bedrooms, and boudoirs throughout the nineteenth century, and they frequently appear in period photographs of interiors Herter Brothers designed.
The MWPI chair is identical in form and in ornamentation with chairs in a drawing room--decorated by Herter Brothers--of a prominent New York City residence that appeared in a photograph published in Artistic Houses (1883-84). Even if the maker of this chair were not known, the butterfly-shaped hand-hold (an allusion, perhaps, to a popular Aesthetic Movement motif), curved crest rail, flaring stiles, and tapering front legs (each of which is encircled by a pronounced "cuff" above a flaring conical foot) would suggest the authorship and date.
