Fan-Back Armchair (Primary Title)
Wallace Nutting, American, 1861 - 1941 (Designer)
Wallace Nutting Furniture, American, active 1917 - 1945 (Manufacturer)
“All persons of taste and discernment will be glad that at last someone has had the courage to undertake the redemption of the Windsor chair,” wrote the self-satisfied Wallace Nutting in 1918. The statement followed on the heels of his guide to Windsor designs (1917) and coincided with the publication of his first furniture trade catalogue, Correct Windsors (1918). Thereafter, the Windsor chair reappeared in Nutting’s photographic “colonials,” including The Morning Mail dated 1912. Usually unoccupied, the chair served as an icon of colonial American and a symbol of an idealized past. Provoked by the abundance of “chairs of mongrel pattern and bad construction,” Nutting began producing “True Colonial Reproductions” in 1917. His interest in fashioning colonial-style interiors complemented his campaign against changing lifestyles, particularly with regard to the controversial “New Woman.” Against this independent female of the modern era, Nutting presented a “Modern Priscilla” engaged in hearth and home. For little more than a dollar, such picture could “make a House a Home.” They could also serve as models of neocolonial gendered behavior.
three labels on bottom of seat: (1) on underside of seat, a printed paper label with the Wallace Nutting trade mark and a lengthy narrative; (2) inscribed in pencil on right side of label: "421"; (3) partially destroyed label for "...(illegible)...Fine Furniture, Boston".
Bequest of John C. and Florence S. Goddin, by exchange
Image released via Creative Commons CC-BY-NC
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