Free Now I Sit Me Down by Witold Rybczynski Page B

common.
    Details changed, but the chair retained its basic form. George Hepplewhite included a wing chair in his furniture handbook, The Cabinet-maker and Upholsterers Guide , which was published in 1788. He called it an easy chair, and also referred to it as a “saddle cheek,” which was the traditional English term for a wing chair, because of the resemblance of the side panel to the cheekpieces of a horse’s bridle. 1 Hepplewhite paired his chair with an adjustable “Gouty Stool,” a footstool “which, by being so easily raised or lowered at either end, is particularly useful to the afflicted.” Gout was a common eighteenth-century ailment; so were pulmonary disorders that obliged the sufferer to sleep sitting upright, for which the wing chair was well suited. The eighty-three-year-old Voltaire spent his final days in a specially made easy chair. The upholstered armchair, which is on display in the Musée Carnavalet in Paris, is on casters, and is fitted with an attached bookrest on one side and a leather-topped writing pad with a drawer on the other; both swing out of the way when not in use. On each side are pockets where the great man—busy until the end—could store papers and books.

    Wing chair (after George Hepplewhite)
    My wing chair doesn’t have a bookrest, but it would be a nice feature since I regularly use it for reading. My chair is not an antique. It was manufactured by the Hickory Chair Company of North Carolina, a firm that pioneered furniture based on eighteenth-century American models. Reproducing old furniture is not uncommon, as we have seen with the klismos. Like many Colonial wing chairs, mine has plain legs connected by stretchers. Although the padding is a combination of foam and sprung upholstery, rather than horsehair and down, the construction of my chair closely resembles its eighteenth-century predecessors: a wooden frame, padded and covered with fabric. It is the proportions and dimensions that are key. Hickory Chair once bought an expensive antique wing chair frame made by John Townsend, a famous Newport, Rhode Island, cabinetmaker, simply in order to be able to accurately reproduce its dimensions. This might seem like overkill, but it isn’t. One doesn’t tinker with perfection, and there is something almost magical about the chairs of that period.
    The eighteenth century has been called the golden age of furniture. What makes the chairs of this period so special is a combination of highly refined technique, excellent materials, and a concern for physical comfort. It was not a matter of invention; the technical advances in upholstery and joinery had already been made—the eighteenth century merely perfected them. Prosperity assured a ready market among the growing middle class as well as the aristocracy, and widely distributed pattern books refined the taste of educated buyers and patrons. Later, the corrosive effects of the Industrial Revolution began to make themselves felt, but throughout most of the eighteenth century traditional craftsmanship prevailed, guaranteeing a level of quality in woodwork that has never been equalled, before or since. As we shall see, global trade also played a role, making first-class materials available to cabinetmakers. And what cabinetmakers they were! Just as achievements in the arts depended on the emergence of a surprising number of exceptional composers (Vivaldi, Haydn, Mozart), painters (Chardin, Reynolds, David), and writers (Pope, Voltaire, Goethe), so too in chair-making, the creative powers of outstanding individuals made themselves felt.
    Chippendale
    My wing chair is based on a mid-eighteenth-century model from Virginia, but Hickory calls it the Chippendale Wing Chair, a case of marketing trumping historical accuracy. The name Chippendale is popularly associated with exceptional furniture, just as Stradivarius is associated with exceptional violins. Yet, unlike Antonio Stradivari, Thomas