Object Description
A painted pine, small chair made to dismantle.
The size of this chair would suggest that it was made for a child. However, the fact that it flat packs and the main parts are numbered points to it perhaps being made for a salesman. The front legs unscrew and the seat is fixed to the back frame by two wooden bolts. The bolts fix from the back of the chair and are further supported by tenons to the seat which fit to mortice joints to the back. The seat is also shaped to the back to fit neatly around the top of the back legs. The underside of the seat and the inside of the cross bar to the top of the legs are both painted with the number 16.
If this was a standard size chair you might assume it was part of a large set of 16 campaign chairs, numbered to ensure they didn’t get mixed up. It would be unlikely that you would need 16 chairs for children unless for use in a school and then they wouldn’t need to dismantle. A salesman would have various models of chair and numbering the designs would be an a easy way to take orders.
The chair is painted in a dark red base colour but has black diamond decoration around the seat frame and a spiral to the seat and back. At some point the chair has been too close to a fire and the paint has suffered from heat damage. Although this has obscured the painted decoration it has given it an interesting ‘crust’. The back of the chair is shaped with an arch to the top and the front legs are nicely turned with the bold shape exaggerated by their reduced height. An interesting portable chair. Swedish, Mid to late 19th Century.