Description:
Chair made from spinning wheel parts during the Colonial Revival movement. The chair is covered in black paint with: "THEY-TOIL-NOT/NEITHER DO THEY-SPIN" (Matthew VI, Chap 19) and: "A K" painted in gold on the back of the chair. A series of centennials, particularly that of the American centennial in 1876, marked the popular beginning of viewing the past through the romantic lens of nostalgia. Simultaneously, the changes of the late-nineteenth century, urbanization, industrialization, and immigration, were threatening to many who felt that the "Americanism" of the country was being jeopardized. They responded by trying to define a national identity based on an idealized golden age that was pre-industrial, rural, and in their view, homogeneous; spinning wheels fit their needs perfectly. Early nineteenth-century innovations made the spinning wheel unnecessary, and soon after, it became a popular symbol of our past, puritan virtues, handicraft, and domesticity. Spining wheels became subjects for paintings, sculptures, and were made into chairs, as in this instance and used as decorative items. The spinning wheel chair, so named because the parts of obsolete, disassembled spinning wheels - with all of their connotations about home and hearth - were reconfigured into a kind of Windsor chair with the supporting elements mortised into both sides of the plank seat. This example was found in Germantown, Pennsylvania, just a couple of miles from Independence Hall and the Liberty Bell. Its first owner undoubtedly placed it with other furnishings that emphasized the integrity of the past and concern for the future.
Link to share this object record:
https://museums.fivecolleges.edu/detail.php?t=objects&type=ext&id_number=HD+86.118 |
