Three Hitchcock Style Chairs (Ca. 1850)

I received three painted chairs from a customer in need of a variety of repairs. All three chairs resemble the classic Hitchcock chair with black paint, okra pin striping and gold stenciling. With all of this said, none of them are stamped with the Hitchcock signature on the back of the chair, so they are most likely 19th century chairs made in the style of Hitchcock. The older two have rush seats while the newer has a cane seat. I believe all three date to the later half of the 19th century.

All three were loose and needed new seats. The paint was in various stages of decay, however the customer liked that look so we agreed to seal the existing paint with shellac to prevent future paint loss and to help bring out the stenciling a bit. this first post deals with the gluing of the chairs.

This first series of chairs details the work done to one of the chairs. The same process was done to all three, but I failed to get photos of the whole process.

This is a photo of the chair as it came to me.
This photo shows the same chair with the seat removed.
In this photo the chair has been dismantled to clean the joinery.
This photo shows the same chair being glued up. I used Hide Glue, which was the glue originally used to glue these chairs.
Here is a photo of the second of the two older chairs dismantled followed by a photo of the chair glued up


This photo shows the third chair with the cane seat being glued up. The last photo shows the three chairs with the clamps on set aside to dry. The hide glue used to glue these chairs takes about 24 hours to fully set up, so The clamps were left on for that time period.

The next post will show the chairs completed as well as a few photos of the caning process.