Original Seating Designs
Arts & Crafts Chairs
I built a pair of these chairs for a physician in Hawaii, as trade for medical services. While the design is based on the simple lines of the Arts and Crafts period, the atypical crest is in the form of a yoke, and I adapted an arrowhead design for the back splat. The black leather upholstery complements the rich tones of the cherry wood.
Tamworth Chairs
This chair was one of two designed and built as part of an installation of clerical furnishings for the sanctuary of a Unitarian Church. Design motifs consist of highly stylized imagery suggesting upraised hands interlocked in a knot, symbolizing the unification of faiths. The design also builds on the values of spiritual focus, economy of design and structural integrity. The hand-hewn texture of the carved seat emphasizes the 'truth to materials' that was part of the credo of the arts and crafts movement.
Paint-decorated Federal Chairs
A client was intent upon having a most exceptional dining room to support extensive entertaining at home. After much research into chair design, a single chair captured their imagination. This chair exists as the sole remainder of chairs constructed in the early 1800s for the daughter of a merchant of the China Trade, which at the time was centered in Salem, Massachusetts. The Salem sea captains consistently risked their lives and fortunes by sailing to Asia around the southern tip of South America, long before the Panama Canal was ever envisioned.
These successful captains enjoyed a wealth and privilege known only to oilmen and heads of financial enterprises today, yet their lives were infinitely more dangerous. Challenged by weather and pirates, their hard earned experience provided entry into Asia and the Pacific Islands before any other traders. Therefore, they gained a wealth achieved by few of that era, and were able to endow their heirs in a manner that remains uncommon to this day. Ms. Eliza Hasket Derby enjoyed the benefits of privilege, and upon her marriage a set of furniture was commissioned and built for her as part of a legacy to be brought forward through the continuing generations.
Indeed, this sole chair remains in the collection of the esteemed Winterthur Museum in Delaware, Maryland, as an example of the high level of achievement in American Furniture of the day. It is one of the most romantic pieces of furniture ever created in America.
I was asked to replicate and construct twenty of these chairs for this client. I enlisted the aide of an old and dear friend and craftsman Arthur Swanson of York, Maine to assist with the painting. With the help of his exceptional abilities and effort, these chairs represent the high achievement of this period, and a high point of American Federal Furniture.
Cherry Art Nouveau Chair
This armchair was designed and built as two of a set of twelve chairs for a New Hampshire residence. It provided me with the opportunity to develop and refine some of the basic Art Nouveau motifs that would become part of my design signature, as they evolved over the years. The carving design of the crest rail, back splat and apron reappear in varying forms in my work.
I was able to use leather for the seat and back splat, which supports a clear definition of the form, and a more uniform coloration. This armchair appeared in an exhibition in Boston, and was selected for publication in the “At Home” section of the Boston Globe, on 11-16-1984.
Postmodern Federal
For over six years, I ran a furniture shop that I started in Kaaka'ako, near the Blaisdell Center in Honolulu, Hawaii. During that time in the late 1980s, Hawaii was experiencing a boom that fueled expansion and supported a great deal of quality custom work. I was able to design and build the executive offices of the Bank of Hawaii, and this set of Postmodern Federal chairs were a part of that commission.
Departing from a classic Federal design, I clarified the lines and eliminated the carving that would have detailed the original period design. The ebonized wood is again a contemporary treatment, never to be seen in Federal chairs. We chose a muted damask fabric to contrast with the blackened wood, and maintain the stark postmodern expression.
Mahogany Art Nouveau Chair
In the mid-1980s, I designed this chair for an alumni exhibition of the North Bennet Street School, where I had learned my craft. Unlike many students and even graduates of the furniture program, I was ready to step back from the traditional designs that we had been taught and branch out on my own. This chair was an early departure from classic styles, but it definitely uses classical chair proportions and construction methods.
The crest, backsplat and apron provide an early example of the carved lines that would emerge throughout my later work.
Another original element is the curved, carved, and bent-laminated bracing that unifies the base and legs of the chair. It serves as a focal point of the chair, while providing exceptional strength.
Turn-of-the-Century Chairs
Hoffman Chair
For several years I was a furniture maker for Macklowe Galleries, on Madison Avenue in New York City. Their business is founded on period Art Nouveau Antiques, and they are world renowned for their fine collection. Occasionally, I would be asked to reproduce a specific chair in order to match a period original, so that the client could use the original in a dining or living room suite. This is a standard request in the antique world, as few chairs exist or survive in large sets over time.
This fine 20th century masterpiece demonstrates why Joseph Hoffman stands as a premier designer. His designs of the 1920s and 1930s resonate with modern and postmodern concepts of design.
Vandevelde Upholstered Chair
Macklowe Galleries in New York commissioned me to replicate this classic chair by the Belgian architect, designer and furniture maker Henri Van De Velde. His work spanned the Art Nouveau, Art Deco, and Weiner Werkestatte periods, and his designs for everything from textiles to locksets demonstrate his commitment to total design.
This deceptively simple chair is an example of the refinement and elegance that he brought to every design.
Vandevelde Side Chair
Mackmurdo Thistle Chair
This chair evolved out of a request from a client for chairs inspired by the designs of the Arts and Crafts artist Arthur Heygate Mackmurdo. One particular Mackmurdo chair of the 1880's was a seminal work of the emerging Art Nouveau period, and was coincidentally on tour with the Art Nouveau Exhibition at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC. I traveled to the show to view the chair, and this design is a contemporary adaptation from the original.
The manufacturing process for this chair was as intriguing as the design, which resulted in its publication in Fine Woodworking Magazine in 2002.
Period Reproduction Chairs
Tassleback Philadelphia Chippendale Chair
This is an American classic, the highest order of Federal Period Chair Designs. The finest examples of Chippendale and other English furnishings were reproduced for the discriminating and wealthy clientele of Philadelphia and New York. The extensive hand-carving of the chairs richly embellished their fine proportions and solid structure.
The models and templates for this chair came from an authentic resource in the community. For several years, I was employed as a cabinetmaker for H. Sacks and Sons, in Boston, Massachusetts. They had acquired a reputation for fine furniture reproductions over a century in business. In my early 20s, I was able to learn techniques from these European furniture makers who were reaching retirement. I enjoyed their friendship as well as mentorship in the formative years of my career. In the end, they gave me their original models and patterns, developed over one hundred years of exacting study, which I have to this day.
Philadelphia Federal Chair
This patron came to me through an associate who is a dealer in antique rugs. One of her clients had achieved success in his business, and had purchased a new home he was eager to inhabit. He needed fine new furnishings, to augment his antiques.
After discussion and study of furniture periods and styles, he determined that he wanted a reproduction of an original carved chair of the Philadelphia Federal style, which was in the collection of the Winterthur Museum of American Decorative Arts, Delaware, Maryland. It is always a challenge to reproduce a finely proportioned and extensively carved original when working from photographs. I was grateful that several antiquarians approved the results of this effort.
Queen Anne Chairs
In the early 1980s, I moved my shop back to Portsmouth, New Hampshire after spending the previous two years in Boston working as a cabinetmaker for H. Sacks and Sons. They had been in the business of making fine antique reproductions for over a century, but taste changed and the market for this fine craft was dwindling. The Sacks Brothers found that they could no longer sustain their overhead and the aged European Furniture makers in their employ, so they disassembled their factory. I had learned from these older men, and had made many period chairs under their tutelage over the years. As I was the only young employee when they broke up the business, I was given many antique templates, patterns and molds so I could carry on the tradition. I still have them.
This client was a patron of the North Bennett Street Furniture Program of which I was a graduate, and would periodically place orders. I was granted this commission, and proceded to use some of the newly acquired patterns and templates to build authentic reproduction Queen Anne chairs. He was pleased, and also ordered two Chippendale armchairs.
Queen Anne Highback Corner Chair
Child's Shieldback Federal Chair
Biedermeier Chair
Several years after I had built a Regency Dining Table for their coastal home in New Hampshire, clients contacted me to discuss furnishings for their new residence in Naples. Although they were avid collectors of fine antiques, they entertained large parties, and needed custom furniture built to compliment their antiques.
They had ordered another Regency period dining table, this time in the style of King George IV of England. This was made in cherry wood, and the pedestals were more ornately carved. To accompany this table they needed chairs, but were looking for something different. We came upon a chair of the Beidermeier style, which evolved in Austria and Germany, almost concurrent with the Regency period In England. The model for this particular chair is thought to have been designed by Joseph Danhauser, and built in the Danhauser Furniture Factory in Vienna, Austria between 1830-1840. We made our version of these chairs in cherry to match the table, rather than the customary beech wood of the period.
The chair design is deceptively modern to this day, even though it dates to the early 1800s. There are no stretchers, so the smooth curves of the legs are clearly expressed. The chair back was also bold in its simplicity of form. After considering the possibilities of construction, I chose to make this back of bent laminations, which were then veneered with cherry. Fine brass pin striping was inlaid into the chair back to replace the ebony in the original, to create contrast and further define the curves.
Couches, Sofas, & Settles
Art Nouveau Settle
I was asked to design a settle for a famous writer of children's books. Of the several designs that were presented, the client chose this version, which is a somewhat more gothic interpretation of art nouveau and Asian motifs that I had developed elsewhere.
