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Armchair

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Photo Credit: Photograph by Karen Mauch


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Bookmark: http://triarte.brynmawr.edu/objects-1/info/184223



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

Manufactured by
Ahmedabad Wood Carving Company
Indian Manufacturer



Armchair

ca. 1881-1886
Wood, upholstery

45 in. x 24.5 in. x 29 in. (114.3 cm x 62.23 cm x 73.66 cm)

Bryn Mawr College
Accession Number: Deanery.361
Acquisition Date: 1935
Geography: North and Central America and Asia, United States and India
Classification: Furnishings and Furniture; Furniture
Culture/Nationality: American design; Indian manufacture
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 armchair, one of a pair with Deanery.360, can be seen in photographs of M. Carey 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.

The armchairs are made of teakwood carved with intricate filigree designs; they have mahogany mask head finials and lion head arms. They were originally upholstered in blue velour, a fabric favored by Thomas and used especially in her study, the Blue Room.

Keywords Click a term to view the records with the same keyword
This object has the following keywords:
  • armchairs - Term applied to a wide variety of chairs with arms, to distinguish them from side chairs which have no arms.
  • Arts and Crafts - An aesthetic and social movement of the late 19th century that originated in England and spread to the United States, Germany, and Northern Europe. A reaction against industrialization and the quality of manufactured goods, the movement is marked by a desire to revive the craftsmanship associated with traditional arts, a form follows function philosophy, and an idealized view of the medieval craft guilds.
  • 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.
  • Indian - Nationality, styles, and culture of the modern nation of India, or more broadly to cultures that developed on the subcontinent of India, which is bounded by the Arabian Sea, the Indian Ocean, the Bay of Bengal, and the Himalayn Mountains. It may also refer even more broadly to cultures of India, the East Indies, and the former British Indian Empire. It was formerly used less specifically to refer to any Oriental or Asian culture. Do not use this term to refer to the indigenous populations of North or South America; see "Native American" or other appropriate terms.
  • teak - Wood of the species Tectona grandis, native to south and southeast Asia, including India, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Myanmar; it is cultivated in many additional areas, including Africa and the Caribbean. Teak is a golden brown wood with a straight grain and coarse texture, very resistant to insects and decay. It is used for high quality furniture, boxes, chests, doors, shipbuilding, railway carriages, veneer, and in India also for building houses. Teak wood retains an aromatic leathery smell for over a hundred years or more.
  • 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.

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Additional Image Deanery.360.BMC_f.jpg
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Additional Image Deanery.361_BMC_d.jpg
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Additional Image Deanery.361_BMC_d_2.jpg
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Additional Image Deanery.361_BMC_d_3.jpg
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Additional Image Deanery.361_BMC_d_4.jpg
Deanery.361_BMC_d_4.jpg

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Image of Armchair
Armchair

Deanery.360

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<ref name=BMC>cite web |url=http://triarte.brynmawr.edu/objects-1/info/184223 |title=Armchair |author=Bryn Mawr College Library Special Collections |accessdate=3/28/2024 |publisher=Bryn Mawr College</ref>

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