A ladderback chair, also ladder-back chair, slatback chair or fiddle back although that name is used less now due to the creation of the fiddle back chair. It gets its name from the horizontal spindles that serve as the back support on them and are reminiscent of a ladder.
Ladderback chairs tend to have tall backs with two uprights. Between these two uprights exists multiple horizontal spindles or slats (three in the picture to the right). The seat can be made of a variety of different materials. Originally the majority of seats were constructed using cane or rush, whereas now, the seats tend to be made of wood. The top slat may be larger than the other slats, pierced, or have a hole in the center, as a utility that makes carrying the chair easier. The larger top slat could also be easily decorated and adorned.
Ladderback chairs date back to the Middle Ages where they can be found in homes across Europe. By the 17th century, this style of chair was among the most common style in England. By the middle of the 17th century, luxury furniture makers began to make ladder-back chairs out of walnut, rather than the more common sycamore or maple and added refined decorations and engravings. The chairs became staples in homes across colonial America. They still remain among the most popular types of chairs. [1] The Metropolitan Museum of Art purchased a ladder-back chair, which was considered a peasant's chair, and was dated between the 17th and 18th centuries, in 1908. [2] It owns a pair of them made in Philadelphia between 1785–95 that resembles chairs made by Philadelphia furniture maker Daniel Trotter (1747–1800). [3]
Production of the several different parts of the chair required a different set of tools than other chairs popular during the 18th century in colonial America like the Windsor chair and formal sidechairs. Creating the cylindrical pieces of a ladder-back chair, such as the legs, occasionally the uprights, or the spindles, were most easily created using a turner's chisels and gouges as the wood spun on a lathe. Meanwhile, the slats along the back of the chair required several different sizes of saws and a plane. The ladderback chair's seat was formed using a drawknife when the seat was made of wood, otherwise, it was woven using cane or rush. [4]
Furniture refers to objects intended to support various human activities such as seating, eating (tables), storing items, working, and sleeping. Furniture is also used to hold objects at a convenient height for work, or to store things. Furniture can be a product of design and can be considered a form of decorative art. In addition to furniture's functional role, it can serve a symbolic or religious purpose. It can be made from a vast multitude of materials, including metal, plastic, and wood. Furniture can be made using a variety of woodworking joints which often reflects the local culture.
Marquetry is the art and craft of applying pieces of veneer to a structure to form decorative patterns, designs. The technique may be applied to case furniture or even seat furniture, to decorative small objects with smooth, veneerable surfaces or to freestanding pictorial panels appreciated in their own right.
A chair is a type of seat, typically designed for one person and consisting of one or more legs, a flat or slightly angled seat and a back-rest. It may be made of wood, metal, or synthetic materials, and may be padded or upholstered in various colors and fabrics.
A rocking chair or rocker is a type of chair with two curved bands attached to the bottom of the legs, connecting the legs on each side to each other. The rockers contact the floor at only two points, giving the occupant the ability to rock back and forth by shifting their weight or pushing lightly with their feet. Rocking chairs are most commonly made of wood. Some rocking chairs can fold.
Chairs are known from Ancient Egypt and have been widespread in the Western world from the Greeks and Romans onwards. They were in common use in China from the twelfth century, and were used by the Aztecs. In Sub-Saharan Africa, chairs were not used before their introduction by Europeans in the sixteenth century.
A curule seat is a design of a (usually) foldable and transportable chair noted for its uses in Ancient Rome and Europe through to the 20th century. Its status in early Rome as a symbol of political or military power carried over to other civilizations, as it was also used in this regard by kings in Europe, Napoleon, and others.
Shaker furniture is a distinctive style of furniture developed by the United Society of Believers in Christ's Second Appearing, commonly known as Shakers, a religious sect that had guiding principles of simplicity, utility and honesty. Their beliefs were reflected in the well-made furniture of minimalist designs.
A Windsor chair is a chair built with a solid wooden seat into which the chair-back and legs are round-tenoned, or pushed into drilled holes, in contrast to other styles of chairs whose back legs and back uprights are continuous. The seats of Windsor chairs are often carved into a shallow dish or saddle shape for comfort. Traditionally, the legs, stretchers, and uprights were usually turned on a pole lathe. Spindles may also be carved, using drawknives and spokeshaves. The back and sometimes the arm pieces are formed from steam bent pieces of wood. Traditional Windsors are typically painted, primarily to hide the different types of wood used in construction, based on their characteristics.
French furniture comprises both the most sophisticated furniture made in Paris for king and court, aristocrats and rich upper bourgeoisie, on the one hand, and French provincial furniture made in the provincial cities and towns many of which, like Lyon and Liège, retained cultural identities distinct from the metropolis. There was also a conservative artisanal rural tradition of French country furniture which remained unbroken until the advent of the railroads in the mid-nineteenth century.
Turned chairs — sometimes called thrown chairs or spindle chairs — represent a style of Elizabethan or Jacobean turned furniture that were in vogue in the late 16th and early 17th century England, New England and Holland. In turned furniture, the individual wooden spindles of the piece are made by shaping them with chisels and gouges while they are being turned on a lathe. Joiners or carpenters who made such furniture were termed "turners", or "bodgers", hence the surname Turner. Today, turned chairs — as well as various turned decorative elements — are still commonly made, but by machines rather than by hand.
Ancient furniture was made from many different materials, including reeds, wood, stone, metals, straws, and ivory. It could also be decorated in many different ways. Sometimes furniture would be covered with upholstery, upholstery being padding, springs, webbing, and leather. Features which would mark the top of furniture, called finials, were common. To decorate furniture, contrasting pieces would be inserted into depressions in the furniture. This practice is called inlaying.
A cabinet is a case or cupboard with shelves and/or drawers for storing or displaying items. Some cabinets are stand alone while others are built in to a wall or are attached to it like a medicine cabinet. Cabinets are typically made of wood, coated steel, or synthetic materials. Commercial grade cabinets usually have a melamine-particleboard substrate and are covered in a high-pressure decorative laminate, commonly referred to as Wilsonart or Formica.
William Savery was an 18th-century American cabinetmaker noted for his furniture in the Queen Anne and Philadelphia Chippendale styles.
Philip Clissett was a Victorian country chairmaker who influenced and inspired the English Arts and Crafts Movement through various architects and designers. His chance meeting with James MacLaren has been described as "undoubtedly a seminal point in the subsequent development of the Arts and Crafts Movement", and led to the furnishing of the meeting room of the Art Workers Guild with a large number of his chairs which can still be seen today. These chairs have been "highly influential", having been "seen by almost everyone involved in art and design from the late 1880s". They particularly influenced Ernest Gimson who, in 1890, spent six weeks with Clissett learning to make ladderback chairs. Clissett's chairs were popular with the Arts and Crafts cognoscenti, and were used by Charles Rennie Mackintosh in early commissions, and by the architectural team of Richard Barry Parker and Raymond Unwin. They were also used as part of the original furnishing of the Passmore Edwards Settlement at Mary Ward House, 5 Tavistock Place, London by the architects A. Dunbar Smith and C. Cecil Brewer.
A. H. Davenport and Company was a late 19th-century, early 20th-century American furniture manufacturer, cabinetmaker, and interior decoration firm. Based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, it sold luxury items at its showrooms in Boston and New York City, and produced furniture and interiors for many notable buildings, including The White House. The word "davenport," meaning a boxy sofa or sleeper-sofa, comes from the company.
What later came to be known as the William and Mary style is a furniture design common from 1700 to 1725 in the Netherlands, Kingdom of England, Kingdom of Scotland and Kingdom of Ireland, and later in England's American colonies. It was a transitional style between Mannerist furniture and Queen Anne furniture. Sturdy, emphasizing both straight lines and curves, and featuring elaborate carving and woodturning, the style was one of the first to imitate Asian design elements such as japanning.
Jennie Alexander was an American woodworker considered a pioneer in the woodworking world, "Instrumental in designing the now iconic two-slat post-and-rung shaving chair." She also coined the term "greenwoodworking" as a single word in her book, Make a Chair from a Tree: An Introduction to Working Green Wood.
Turkeywork is a knotted-and-cut pile furnishing textile produced in England from the sixteenth to the mid-eighteenth centuries. Turkeywork was used for table carpets, cupboard carpets, cushions, and especially for matched sets of upholstery for chair seats and backs.
Daniel Trotter (1747-1800) was an American furniture maker.