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Antique Rush Seat Windsor Chair
Every
damaged antique that comes into our shop has a story to tell. This
unique rush-seat Windsor chair arrived after a failure near a front
leg caused a chain reaction, breaking an associated stretcher and
landing our client on the floor. You can see some of the damage
from the pictures below:
This turning was
completely broken, but the client found, and wisely saved all of the
splintered pieces. This allowed for restoration of the original
stretcher rather than a potentially unsightly repair, or costly
duplication of the original part.
This joint, a
necessary component of the rush seat framework, was the originating
failure that caused the need for this repair. Opening this joint for
repair revealed that although the joinery was originally glued with
hide glue, a repair to this part was previously made improperly using
a heavy spread of yellow glue.
Another previous
repair was also disassembled, cleaned up, and reassembled with hide
glue and the steel strap from the previous repair was carefully
reattached. Ordinarily, a steel strap secured over a break is not
considered an acceptable (or at least preferable) repair. However,
this repair part had an attractive patina and did not look out of
place. Enough is not known about the story that this chair has to
tell and we decided that this unorthodox repair part was a chapter
best left in the story of this beautiful piece.
It is unfortunate
that this chair was previously repaired with an inappropriate type of
glue, but fortunately the thickness of it allowed for easy disassembly
and easy removal of it in order to make more historically responsible
and accurate repairs with hide glue. (As a side note, hide glue is
the glue of choice for many antique restoration projects both for it's
historical accuracy as well as its reversibility in the years to
come.)
Years of use and years of life have left their mark on this beautiful
chair. It is easy to imagine a student hunched over a desk or the
family table - engrossed in their work, with their feet tucked under
them, resting against the center stretcher. You can almost see a
proud grandfather leaning back after a holiday meal and absent
mindedly rubbing the graceful curves of the arm rests, rubbing through
the finish to expose the bare wood and creating a polish that only the
years can create. The dings and marks on the corners of the front
legs testify to many encounters with unyielding table legs or the
marks that they proudly left on a desk or two.
Like us, this beautiful old piece was assembled from many complicated
and delicate pieces. Like any of us, the years will continue to make
the "bones" of this chair dry and weak. Like any of us, as it ages,
it's joints don't work like their supposed to; they make noises and
sometimes even fail.
This beautiful chair has almost certainly outlived it's maker. With
love and care, and a few trips to a "doctor" along the way, it may
outlive the man who just repaired it.
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