wainscot chair
wainscot chair

A reader commented on one of my recent posts and mentioned that he liked the chair behind me in one of the photos. I think we’re talking about this joined & carved example. It’s oak, carved and painted. The paint is made from linseed oil with iron oxide & lampblack pigments. The chair is copied from two examples surviving from Ispwich Massachusetts…I copied the proportions and construction details, and mixed the carving patterns from various related examples of chests & the two chairs. It should have three turned finials on the upper rear section of the chair…I just have never bothered to make them and install them. One day…

 

 

My favorite wainscot chair is this three-legged example that I copied from one in the Chipstone collection in Milwaukee, WI. It’s large, and most important of all, it’s comfortable. It was too big for our house though so I gave it to a friend of mine for his 50th birthday…but I was just thinking about making another one recently, and keeping it in the shop…in my spare time.
 
 
 
 

 

3 legged wainscot chair

3 legged wainscot chair

Both of these chairs are based on originals that probably date from the mid-to-late seventeenth-century. I did an article years ago about the three-legged one, it’s in American Furniture 1998. You can view it online at www.chipstone.org  go to publications – american furniture – 1998 – then scroll down to the article “A Seventeenth-Century Carpenter’s Conceit”