Page:Southern Antiques - Burroughs - 1931.djvu/184

160  the shield-shape back which, along with his heart-shape, largely predominate, and some have been found showing fine inlay and carving. The Sheraton period produced many chairs with square backs in the neoclassic style, which were very fragile.

Along with the chairs influenced by the master designers, we find the turned chairs made in quantities for use wherever finer chairs could not be had. Many Windsor chairs, heretofore thought to have been solely a product of the New England and Middle Atlantic States, have been found in the South, of Southern manufacture. A. Redmond, in the South Carolina Gazette



and General Advertiser, in 1764, advertised "Turnery in all its branches," and "Likewise Windsor chairs, either armed or unarmed, as neat as any imported, and made of much better stuff." It is strange to note that some are found with a great variety of woods used in their construction, while some are found made completely of walnut; and two writing-arm Windsors made entirely of walnut were found in the South.

Nothing is more difficult to place in a definite manufacture than a chair, as only certain deviations from a general style will help to do so. Many sets of chairs were made in the South for the original furnishings of homes, and these only can be definitely placed. It has been said that one can tell American-made chairs of the Chippendale period by the fact that the side seat rails have a tenon that passes through the rear legs, but this cannot always be used to determine a Southern-made chair, as many of the workmen learned their trade in England, and did not follow this construction.

PLATE I. . (Virginia—c. 1620-1640). The wainscot, which harks back into the early days, is of unusual interest. The fact that this chair is made of American oak establishes it as a Southern chair, as do the facts that two chairs and a part of a third were found within a radius of forty miles in Chesterfield County; and that no others of this type with the square legs, rasp-turned at the top, have been found in the United States, lead us to the inference that it was not imported from some other point. This type of chair in England is generally