The signature piece is this
fully elastic chair, owned by Winterthur, which is decorated
with a delicate peacock feather pattern.
By Karla Klein Albertson
WILMINGTON, DEL. -- Fanciers of Americana have long been
fascinated by Samuel Gragg (1722-1855), an innovative and
inventive Boston craftsman, who received a patent in 1808 for
what he dubbed his "elastic" chair. "The Incredible Elastic
Chairs of Samuel Gragg," on view at Winterthur through June 15,
thoroughly explores both the variety of seating produced and the
inventive techniques used by this unique chairmaker.
Although he began as an ordinary chairmaker manufacturing the
Windsors popular in the early Nineteenth Century, Gragg is
revered for his elastic chair patent, which involved a new method
of bending continuous strips of wood with steam to form the back,
seat and front legs of side chair. While the stylish product
shares a profile with the classical chairs popular at the time,
the result transcends its own period and looks forward to later
bentwood furniture and even the streamline modern designs of the
Twentieth Century.
The graceful chair form created by Gragg's process was then
completed with decorative painting by a skilled assistant, which
added a unifying base color and intricate patterns that
harmonized the various woods, such as ash, oak, hickory and
beech, used in the piece's composition. Unfortunately for
admiring collectors, known examples of Gragg chairs number in the
dozens rather than the hundreds. Examples rarely come on the
market out of private hands, and many are firmly clasped in
permanent museum collections. Furthermore, there has been a
dearth of serious scholarship on the chairmaker's methods and
production, but the need has now been satisfied by a new
traveling exhibition organized by Winterthur.
After extensive research, which uncovered important written
documentation as well as further examples of this type of
furniture, Senior Furniture Conservator Michael S. Podmaniczky
organized the exhibition. Just as Gragg learned about wood from
his wheelwright father, Podmaniczky came to the subject with
hands-on experience: "I have a background in bent wood, because I
was a boat builder by trade before I went into conservation 20
years ago. As I moved into the conservation profession, I took a
job at the Williamstown Regional Conservation Center at the Clark
Art Institute. Curiously enough, one of the projects I worked on
there in 1985 was a set of Gragg elastic chairs. I had been aware
of them before, but at that moment -- being that close to them --
I realized that they were unique in American furniture making and
design. I just was entranced by them."
Although Gragg clearly stated on his trade and advertising that
he made settees as well as chairs, the whereabouts of only one
example is known at this time.
When he began exploring Gragg's work further for the coming
exhibition, the conservator began with information set down by
Patricia Kane of the Yale University Art Gallery in an article
for the museum bulletin of that institution.
"I did research on the Gragg chairs and published information on
them back in 1972," she explains. "We have one chair here of the
type with a separate front leg ending a goat hoof foot; the
example has peacock feathers on the back and traces of gilding.
Mike Podmaniczky has found a lot more information, many more
chairs have surfaced in the intervening 30 years, and he's
actually tracked down the patent application, which is fabulous."
Kane continues, "This is a really exciting group of American
furniture by a very inventive chairmaker. He was trying to
capture the sinuous profile that was appearing in French and
English furniture at that period by using this bentwood
technique. The elastic chair was Gragg's entry in the painted
parlor furniture category."
From an art historical standpoint, the Winterthur exhibition
discusses Gragg's chairs within the milieu of the Classical
klismos chairs and painted fancy furniture of the first quarter
of the Nineteenth Century. Wendy Cooper included an elastic chair
in "Classical Taste in America, 1800-1840" at the Baltimore
Museum of Art ten years ago. She wrote in the catalog: "While it
is unlikely that Gragg was aware of the parallel production in
Brussels of chairmaker Jean-Joseph Chapuis, it is almost certain
that he recognized the imminent popularity of this new taste for
the antique, and this is precisely what he responded to with his
'new, elegant and superior style' chairs and settees."
For this new exhibition Podmaniczky first connects Gragg's work
with period parallels such as the classically inspired saber-leg
chair: "I put him in the Empire milieu in Boston at that point.
He's looking at the classical revival and the klismos chair and
published English designs as well as imported examples. He's also
working at a time when color and surface decoration is really
taking off. At that seminal time, all sorts of interesting things
were being done. So he's thinking klismos, he's thinking color
and decoration, and he's thinking this wood-bending process."
The conservator, however, is far more interested in the technical
innovations that make the elastic chair so different from its
contemporaries: "My thesis, if you will, is that the catalyst for
his invention was the influence coming from the boatyard. Any
place in Boston as it existed in the early Nineteenth Century was
just around the corner from the waterfront. We do not have
documentation for this, but undoubtedly he knew people that built
boats. He saw boats with bent wood frames and it just clicked. He
was a very practical person who pulled together these designs and
processes into a unique form."
"The great 'Eureka!' of research for this exhibition was when I
came across his description in the patent of what he was doing
and how he was doing it," explains the conservator. "The patent
office burned in 1836, so all prior patents stored in that
repository were gone. There appears to have been two copies of
this patent, one for the government and one for the inventor, and
Gragg's personal copy of the patent came down through his family
and was given to the Carrier Library at the James Madison
University in Virginia. They considered it a historical document
because it was signed by Thomas Jefferson and James Madison."
On loan to the exhibition, the lengthy document with its
description of the process offers new insight into Gragg's
thinking. The chairmaker states: "The invention of this
improvement in the common parlor sitting chair consists in the
application of proper pieces, or strips of oak, ash or other
suitable wood, bent by being steamed, in such a manner as to form
the bottom & the back of the chair. The pieces of said wood
which form the back of the chair are so bent as to form the
bottom of it also, and are bent as aforesaid & arranged in
such a manner, that the back of the chair is completely braced,
rendered very elastic, very comfortable & and agreeable to
the person sitting on it...."
What Gragg has set out in long sentences, the exhibition
illustrates with examples. Visitors can view both types of his
patent chairs: one with separately made and attached front legs
and the "fully elastic" model that features wood bent in a
continuous breathtaking sweep from the bottom of the front leg to
the crest rail. Because he is so adept at woodworking himself,
Podmaniczky has also created an elastic chair visitors may sit on
in the "Please Be Seated" display and another "exploded" chair
that he made and then took apart to let everyone see how the
pieces fit together.
Samuel Gragg's trade card, circa 1808, enthusiastically
promotes his newly patented elastic chairs but also states that
he manufactures other types of chairs popular in that period,
including bamboo Windsors.
"I am more of a technical person, so I have chosen to focus on
the objects themselves and let them speak," he admits. "I want to
get across to the public how special these chairs are and how
they are made, to show them the technical connection with other
similar objects and to show where there are not connections."
Gragg is often mentioned along with other cabinetmakers who
experimented with bent wood and lamination, so the exhibition
features a comparison with the chairs of Chapuis (1765-1864),
Michael Thonet (1796-1871) of Germany and the productive American
John Henry Belter (1804-1863). But the conservator stresses,
"Samuel Gragg was the innovator. Gragg stands as a giant, as a
unique expression of American furniture craftsmanship."
Although there is unfortunately no catalog for this exhibition,
The Magazine Antiques will publish an illustrated article
on Gragg by Podmaniczky in the May issue, and the conservator is
preparing a more technical article for the future. He is also
putting together a database of Gragg-stamped and Gragg-attributed
chairs as a resource for others, which already includes dozens of
examples with various decoration schemes including peacock
feathers, a eagle and a landscape scene.
Although a professional furniture painter and not Gragg himself
would have executed these designs, the motifs on his chairs are
finely painted and compliment rather than detract from the
dramatic form. A section of the exhibition deals with precedents
for the peacock feather motif -- the most common design used on
Gragg chairs -- and the conservator continues to seek out more
information on painters who might have worked with Gragg.
Podmaniczky says in conclusion, "The painted decoration is very
special as well. I engaged a decorative painter from Boston named
Patricia McMahon, who can replicate the peacock feather, and I
have a display she has done for the exhibition."
"The Incredible Elastic Chairs of Samuel Gragg" is on display at
the institution through June 15. The show will then travel to the
Milwaukee Art Museum in July and the Peabody Essex Museum in
Salem, Mass., in November.
Winterthur is located on Route 52, six miles northwest of
Wilmington. For information and hours, contact the museum and
gardens at 800-448-3883 or www.winterthur.org.
