American Chairs: Queen Anne and Chippendale
New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1972. Hardcover. Brown cloth boards with gold gilt lettering, white and pictorial dust jacket with black spine with white lettering, 208 pp. 5 color plates and 252 bw plates. VG-/G+ (book shows minimal wear at edges, all pages clear and intact - dust jacket shows wear at corners, with a few small tears, still protective). Item #26178
ISBN: 9780394473284
"In this totally fresh look at the art of chairmaking in America in the eighteenth century, John Kirk shows how the finest colonial chairs, in their superb craftsmanship, reflect the contect, the time, and the place of their creation - deriving from the tradition of English provincial furniture, yet expressing a uniquely American aesthetic spirit. Mr. Kirk analyzes - and shows the reader how to analyze - the structure and design of 180 chairs (all of them illustrated) through such details as feet, rails, and splats, as well as overall design impact. He reveals the identifying regional characteristics of the major American style centers - Philadelphia, Massachusetts, New York, Rhode Island, the Connecticut Valley, and the South - and shows connoisseurs and amateurs alike how a recognition of these difference of style and construction can increase one's understanding both of individual objects and of the development of American furniture styles. For the designer, the chair is perhaps the most demanding of furniture forms. Not only does it present major structural problems, but visually its relative smallness requires that the whole piece fucntion as a tightly integrated design from any angle. The author demonstrates, point by point, how these demands were met by various craftsmen and how the problems themselves often pushed the best designers to achieve the quintessence of the style in which they worked." - dust jacket description.
OCLC: 333604
Price: $29.97