Tag Archives: chairs

Objectification

14 Thursday Jan 2016

Posted by in History, Museums, personal, Philosophy, Reenacting

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Corner chair. Mahogany with fabric-covered slip seat. John Goddard, 1763. RIHS 1990.36.1 RHix5136

Corner chair. Mahogany with fabric-covered slip seat. John Goddard, 1763. RIHS 1990.36.1 RHix5136

I’ve had more alone time than usual at work, which is to say, I’ve been the only living creature in 16,000 SF for multiple consecutive days, which allows me both time to get lots of work done but also permits my mind to wander more than it might otherwise. One of the ideas I continually return to is about the objectification of objects. That’s a terrible phrase, isn’t it? What is the essential thingness of any given thing?

Let’s take chairs: I really like chairs, which is to say that I have, at last, succumbed to the seductive qualities of chairs.[i] But what makes a chair a chair?

Most simply, a chair is to be sat upon. Keeps your rump off the cold, cold ground. Supports your legs and back. Sometimes a chair is for lolling. Sometimes it’s for working. Sometimes it’s for projecting power. But essential, a chair is for sitting.

If use– specifically human use[ii]– is what chairs are for, what happens when a chair is removed from use, and placed on display in a museum?[iii] And what difference does it make whether that chair is on a white plinth in an art museum, or in a historic house, or in the historic house where it was used? When is a chair most a chair, other than the times you are sitting in one?

As I said: a lot of alone time.

servant mannequin in 18th century room

That’s no ghost, that’s my kid. Corner chair just in front of the ghost.

Within a historic house, it seems that the ideal situation is the chair in the room in the house.

That would seem to maximize the “realness” of the thing, right? But we don’t always have the chair, and even when we do, we may not know which room it was used in most often.

The way a chair is displayed and understood in an art museum: Object of Beauty is very different from the way a chair is displayed and understood in a history: Who Sat Here? It’s a conundrum though, because just as the chair become Beautiful Thing in an art museum, it can become Story from the Past in a history museum. Neither presentation/interpretation really gets at Chairness, which is really best experienced by sitting in the chair yourself.

Did I mention I spend a lot of time alone with objects?

Storeroom, Rhode Island Historical Society. RHix17 399

Storeroom, Rhode Island Historical Society. RHix17 399

The way that I think these questions about Chairness relate to living history is by realizing that just as museums fetishize objects on white pedestals, living history interpreters/reenactors sometimes fetishize objects without contextualizing them. You know: Muskets. Clothes. Spinning Wheels.[iv]

Putting the chair in the room where it was used gives it context, and the visitor a new perspective that wouldn’t be gained from a white pedestal, or from the curb. The same is true of the things that we carry as interpreters. Context matters. It’s how meaning is derived and understood. Like repetition, isolation can rob an object—or a person—of meaning. Not that I’m lonely. I have all those chairs, after all.

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[i] Not to get too weird, though: I won’t rhapsodize (yet) about the sensual curve of a chair leg, or a delicate, finely-turned ankle, as I have heard some (fetishistic?) curators so. Yet: there’s still time.

[ii] Sorry cats: chairs were not actually made for you. Now get down!

[iii] If you know anything about art history and theory, you can probably guess which decade I was in graduate seminars.

[iv] My *favorite* thing to see in a military setting.

Why Do We Buy Things?

10 Monday Nov 2014

Posted by in Collecting, History, personal

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The Sunday, November 9th Guardian had a series of short articles on collecting, including one on why people collect things. This was similar to the New York Times’“Room for Debate” series on Why We Collect Stuff.

Chair, table, chair.

I liked the Guardian’s “Love, anxiety or desire?” question, and asked it of myself: why do I collect?

Collecting is something that I had given up for a while, given that so much of what Mr S and I had collected was stashed in boxes in our basement after an apartment move nine years ago. Nine years! If you haven’t unpacked in that time, do you really even care about those things?

No, not really. Many the things I unpacked recently as we went through the basement again are destined for Etsy: McCoy pottery vases, colorful Pyrex, FireKing glassware. I bought it at a time when I liked green pottery—it was an outgrowth of the blue and yellow creamware I’d begun collecting when I first lived in Rhode Island.

But now, I’m done with it: done with the mid-century modern, and going back to the early American things. There’s an aesthetic quality I like in both styles: simple lines, bright colors.

The most recent acquisition is a drop-leaf table in a very country Sheraton style, with a tiger maple skirt. I watched this table for months before finally committing to it, and dragging Mr S up there late Saturday afternoon. He was game, and in the past day the table has grown on him.

Why did I want it? For one thing, it reminds me of a maple drop-leaf Sheraton-style table my mother has, so perhaps there’s an element of nostalgia, or a desire for approval. I also imagined it exactly where it is, though it will require some adjustment in lighting. Did I buy a piece not only of the American past, but of my own? Is this what adulthood looks like? Or am I just responding to shape and color?

The table and chairs are low, and not comfortable in the way that modern furniture is: I wouldn’t want to sit in the chairs or work at the table every day, but these things give me pleasure, whether bought for love, anxiety, or desire.

Strip it! Wait, maybe not?

13 Tuesday Aug 2013

Posted by in Museums, Research

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For once, the MFA’s search engine trumps the Met’s (hat tip to Sharon for pointing out painted versions).

Brace-back Windsor side chairs, Providence, 1780-1810. MFA Boston, 1976.776

Providence, thank you very much, green over black paint. Here’s another chair, clearly green. (This is very interesting, as the ones in my museum are not painted. Clearly, there’s wide range and variation in chair finishes. Now to think about temporal and geographic distribution of those finishes…)

High fan-back Windsor armchair, Boston area. MFA Boston, 64.86

My first concern was location. All I can tell you right now about the one I found is that is seems to be from New England: much more looking to do to narrow this down to a state. (Most of my furniture time is spent looking at shells, feet, and splats, but I like the Windsor style better, so this will be fun.)

Once I figure out where the chair came from–if I can–then I can decide whether or not to strip it. The easiest thing is to clean it and then repaint it in proper colors (like green over black, happily documented to Providence).

If the preponderance of examples I find like this are not painted then I will have to look at the condition of the wood (hmm…might not be so great) and see what I think. Somewhere I even think I’ve seen a furniture check cover for a Windsor chair in a painting…always more to hunt for.

Things are Red in New Bedford

12 Monday Aug 2013

Posted by in Making Things

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The Mouse Diorama, thankfully a short-lived art form.

Because the Boston Peace Treaty event got moved (it will now happen on Saturday, September 28; more on this later), we were free this past weekend. We went east on Route 6, where in years past I have purchased a Christmas tree at a clam shack, southeastern New England’s answer to the gas station tree lots I’ve visited in suburban Philadelphia. It’s not the prettiest drive, but it has some coastal views eventually, sporadically, you can end up at strange antiques emporia in converted mills.

It’s not pretty out there: people do bad things with objects. The exact heyday of the Mouse Diorama is unknown, but I believe this form flourished in the late 1970s and early 1980s; by the late 1980s, artists were, uh, “commenting ironically” on the form (if I had a slide scanner, I’d show you). This example makes striking use of red, and the “Love By Cat” title of the book read by the mouse in bed intrigues me. “Love by Cat?” And the cat portrait on the chair: does the mouse upstairs have some sado-masochistic cat-related death-wish fantasies hidden from Mrs Mousie downstairs in her sanguine faux-colonial gown? I don’t know, but this is one of the more disturbing rodent dioramas I’ve seen.

Poor painted chair.

In happier and less bizarre news, we found a decent chair. Bad things have been done to this chair, well, one bad thing called paint (oddly, also red; perhaps Mrs Mousie gets around). The bones of the chair are fine: basic country Windsor chair, but painted. We’ve seen a lot of painted “primitive” stuff out there in the antique shops lately. It’s pretty sad what people will to a perfectly usable wooden bowl, or saddest of all, an 18th century sea chest with hand-forged hinges. Paint! But, this chair was well-priced and half-off that price, so we bought it, and on the way home, bought stripper. It’s already wrecked so we might as well strip it and use it.