Spindles and Spokes
Introduction
"Windsor" is the generic name for furniture with turned legs and back spindles doweled into a solid seat. Lightweight but strong, suitable for use inside or outdoors, Windsor chairs have never gone out of fashion since they first appeared near Windsor, England, in the 1720s and in this country about a decade later. Very few other household furnishings can match this survival rate.
Due to their versatility, Windsors remained popular throughout the 19th century. In an influential book on interior decoration, Hints on Household Taste (1868), English stylemaker Charles Locke Eastlake hailed the humble Windsor as a model of honest construction suitable for every home. It held the same appeal during the Arts and Crafts movement at the end of the century. For similar reasons, Windsors also came to be regarded as an emblem of colonial America in the popular imagination. Because of their long tradition, to this day such chairs are commonly decorated with college seals and sold in alumni shops at many colleges and universities.
Windsor forms continue to inspire furniture design. The minimal structure of Tage Frid's stools for example, is indebted to the Windsor style, while George Nakashima's furniture represents a unique hybrid of Japanese and American aesthetic traditions.
The majority of chairs in this exhibition were collected between 1910 and 1930 by Eliza Greene Radeke, President of RISD and daughter of its founders. Recent gifts of an early English Windsor chair and two reproductions from the early 20th century are presented here for the first time, in addition to other objects that Windsor chairmakers made or inspired, such as spinning wheels.
Thomas Michie
Exhibition images
