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Side Chair

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Bookmark: http://triarte.brynmawr.edu/objects-1/info/184219



Designed by
Lockwood de Forest
American (1850 - 1932) Primary

Manufactured by
Ahmedabad Wood Carving Company
Indian Manufacturer



Side Chair

ca. 1895-1904
Wood, upholstery

34 1/4 in. x 20 in. x 19 1/2 in. (87 cm x 50.8 cm x 49.53 cm)

Bryn Mawr College
Accession Number: Deanery.260
Acquisition Date: 1935
Geography: North and Central America
Classification: Furnishings and Furniture; Furniture
Culture/Nationality: American design
Collection: Deanery Collection
Description: Lockwood de Forest (1850-1932) was an American-born artist who is most well-known for his landscape painting and interior design, as well as for his partnership with Louis Comfort Tiffany and the Associated Artists in New York. As a young man he travelled frequently with his family, touring Europe, North Africa, and parts of the Middle East before the age of 25, but his greatest interest was in the decorative arts of Eastern India. De Forest spent many years in Ahmedabad overseeing a workshop where craftsmen produced carved furniture, tracery panels, jewelry, and textiles for export to New York City.

This side chair can be seen in a 1904 photograph of the Deanery, located in a hallway between M. Carey Thomas’s study (an early version of the Blue Room, designed by de Forest in 1896) and her friend Mamie Gwinn’s small study. After the Deanery was renovated and expanded in 1908-1909, the chair was moved to Thomas’s large sitting room, known as the Dorothy Vernon Room. The room was modeled after one in Haddon Hall, Derbyshire, England, which Thomas had visited numerous times while she was a student, traveling in Europe. De Forest designed the room as a mixture of English and East Indian design, although Japanese teakwood tables and Tiffany lamps were used in the room as well. After the Deanery was razed in 1968, a new Dorothy Vernon Room was installed in Haffner Hall, about a quarter size of the original room, where many of the ceiling stencils, furniture, and other furnishings were re-located.

On View: On Loan to the Philadelphia Museum of Art

Keywords Click a term to view the records with the same keyword
This object has the following keywords:
  • art furniture - Term applied in the 1860s to furniture produced by firms which employed leading designers and architects. Designs tended toward simple forms with hand-carved and painted decoration.
  • carvings - Refers to works executed by cutting a figure or design out of a solid material such as stone or wood. It typically refers to works that are relatively small in size, are part of a larger work, or are not considered art. For large and medium-sized three-dimensional works of art, use the broader term "sculpture" or another appropriate term.
  • side chairs - Term generally applied to a wide range of chairs without arms to distinguish them from armchairs.
  • upholstery - Refers to the fixed soft coverings for furniture, especially seating and reclining furniture. Originally referred to all the textile components of a room supplied by upholsterers, including wall hangings, bed hangings, window curtains, and table coverings.
  • wood - The principal tissue of trees and other plants that provides both strength and a means of conducting nutrients. Wood is one of the most versatile materials known.

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Additional Image Deanery.260_BMC_f.jpg
Deanery.260_BMC_f.jpg

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<ref name=BMC>cite web |url=http://triarte.brynmawr.edu/objects-1/info/184219 |title=Side Chair |author=Bryn Mawr College Library Special Collections |accessdate=3/28/2024 |publisher=Bryn Mawr College</ref>

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