My second version of a Roorkhee chair features details found on other traditional early 20th-century chairs – the most notable difference being that this chair does not have leather straps running left and right below the seat.
This strapless setup seems to be far more common in the historical photos I’ve examined of Roorkhee chairs at war and on safari.
The good news is that this chair sits just the same as the earlier version I built.
The even better news (for me) is that I have lots more variations to explore in the upcoming months because I have orders for several more of these chairs and will be teaching a class in making them next summer at the Marc Adams School of Woodworking.
The Roorkhee chair – sometimes called the Indian chair – was in production for much longer than my earlier sources suggested. I’ve found manufactured versions that look like they are from the 1970s. So there’s lots of territory for me and other woodworkers to trek through – different leg turnings, wood, hardware, leather strapping and so forth.
There’s even a version I’ve found that’s covered in fur. It will be great for your next winter adventure – or wife-swapping party I suppose.
My next variations will focus on the leather – I have some dyed leather sides coming that are waterproof and others that are dyed different colors on either side.
I still need to find a source for sewing some canvas seat covers, however. Otherwise I’m going to get a bad reputation in the bovine community.
The view of the back of the house from the slave’s work yard. The main house (yellow) is flanked by the slave quarters (left) and the carriage house (right).
Our Sunday-afternoon tour of the Aiken-Rhett house in Charleston, S.C., began in the basement of the historic structure. And as far as I was concerned, it could have ended there.
The first room on the tour is the so-called “warming room,” where slaves would hold the food that was about to be served to the masters upstairs – up the back stairwell of course.
This room contained a stretcher table that looked just like many of the stretcher tables I’ve been investigating at the Museum of Early Southern Decorative Arts. A ladderback chair in front of the hearth looks like the chairs in my files. The built-in cupboards were detailed with simple beads for the most part – plus some other straightforward profiles.
The reason this room was so intoxicating is the Aiken-Rhett house is my favorite kind of house museum. Instead of trying to restore the structure to some certain point in its history, the Historic Charleston Foundation committed itself to preserving the house in its current state. Not adding. Not taking away. Not changing. Just suspending the house in time after an amazing 192-year run in a city at the epicenter of our country’s volatile history.
So the furniture is the real stuff. Not reimagined or restored or rebuilt to some modern plan. The walls throughout the house are in various stages of decay, with the shadow of every layer of wallpaper and built-in still evident.
The warming room, slave quarters and work yard are interesting and striking to me because they have aged far better than the rooms reserved for the masters. The slave quarters feature simple plaster walls. The moulding at the floor is simple yellow pine with a bead at the top. The original furniture is nothing special, and yet it wears its scars from age better than the high-style stuff in the main house.
In the fancy part of the house the elaborate mouldings, plaster work, wallpaper and paint haven’t survived as well – no surprise considering the fragility of the materials. The original furniture was fairly well cared for, though the post-1830 stuff is awkward, heavily veneered and infused with classicism (to my eye). Interestingly, the slave’s work yard was built with Gothic details.
So what the heck does all this mean? Glad you asked. The Aiken-Rhett house is definitely a four-story touchstone for my next book, “The Furniture of Necessity.” Until I walked into the cool, dark confines of the house’s warming room, I was wondering if my ideas for the book were nuts. After 10 minutes poking around the warming room, I became certain my ideas for the book were nuts – and dead-nuts correct.
— Christopher Schwarz
P.S. My apologies for the photos. The museum’s policy is to allow photos only from exterior vantage points. If you are ever in Charleston, I highly recommend a visit to this home.
The view of the back of the house from the slave’s work yard. The main house (yellow) is flanked by the slave quarters (left) and the carriage house (right).
We now stock American-made Lost Art Press hats from Bayside Apparel, a Tacoma, Wash., company. These hats are navy blue, unstructured and feature our dividers embroidered in white thread with white piping on the bill.
The hats are adjusted with a steel clasp and fabric tab. These are 100-percent cotton caps and are the nicest American-made hats we could find. They are a bit more expensive than our previous caps, but we bought a large quantity of these Bayside-brand hats to get the price down somewhat. As a result, this hat costs $17 – or $1 more than our earlier Chinese-made hats.
They are available for immediate shipment and can be purchased here from our store.
When I design furniture and use photographs of other pieces as a guide, I have to be careful. While photos are great for transmitting form, they often obscure details, texture or even the piece’s true color.
My brain also tends to fill in all these missing details with workmanship that is too perfect, too precious or just wrong. It’s like using a “paint bucket” tool in a drawing program instead of a piece of graphite pencil on paper.
This Campaign-style tea caddy that I studied yesterday at Tucker Payne Antiques in Charleston, S.C., is a good example of this phenomenon. I’ve seen photos of hundreds of caddies, but nothing beats spending time with the real thing.
The outside of the chest is pretty much as-expected. It’s when you lift the lid that the fun begins. The six hinged lids are – for me – what makes this piece special. I like the way the light plays over the frame-and-panel structures. And still after about 150 years of service, the lids fit well and move smoothly.
As you get closer, however, you discover that these lids are not made using frame-and-panel construction. Each lid is one piece of wood and all the details were carved or scratched into the work. This is straightforward work with a chisel and scratch stock – it would be a ridiculous amount of work to make 24 26 tiny mortise-and-tenon joints. And really quite unnecessary, as the smooth action of the lids will attest.
This is the kind of detail that in-person examination reveals and is why I’ll drive many hours to see it.
— Christopher Schwarz
P.S. I’ve been blogging about some of the other Campaign pieces I’ve encountered during this trip on my blog at Popular Woodworking Magazine. You can read those entries here.
“It is worth noting on the Platte one may sometimes see the shattered wrecks of ancient claw-footed tables, well waxed and rubbed, or massive bureaus of carved oak. These, some of them no doubt the relics of ancestral prosperity in the colonial time, must have encountered strange vicissitudes. Brought, perhaps from England; then, with the declining fortunes of their owners, borne across the Alleghanies to the wilderness of Ohio or Kentucky; then to Illinois or Missouri; and now at last fondly stowed away in the family wagon for the interminable journey to Oregon. But the stern privations of the way are little anticipated. The cherished relic is soon flung out to scorch and crack upon the hot prairie.”
— Francis Parkman, “The Oregon Trail, Works, Vol. 12,” (Little, Brown, 1910) page 103
