Walnut Eastlake Side Chair (ca.1875)

The Completed Chair

Recently I restored and repaired a Walnut Eastlake Chair. I put a date of 1875 on this chair but in truth chairs like this were made throughout the United States for most of the second half of the 19th century. It is probably from the fourth quarter of that century and has design characteristics that are associated with the American form of the Eastlake Movement. A search of the label Eastlake on this blog will shed more light on that movement.

I have written about and repaired chairs like this in the past but I thought this one was interesting especially because of the repair. The seat is made from hand woven cane which is woven into a Walnut seat frame. The left side of the frame (facing) had broken along the perforations made for the cane to pass through, which are the weakest part of the frame. The common repair for this is to glue the broken piece on and screw it as well between the perforations. 

This repair works for the short term but more often than not I have seen it fail again after a few years. I decided to try another approach which I have outlined below. But first, a few photos of the chair as it came into the shop.

This photo shows the damage to the seat frame from below.

The first step was to remove the seat frame and the loose components of the chair for repair and gluing. The front stretcher had a crack in it which separated completely. This photo below shows that stretcher being repaired.

This photo shows the seat frame removed from the chair. The broken portion has been removed from the frame on the left.

The individual components of the seat frame are seen knocked apart here with the broken piece on the right.

I used a new piece of Walnut to patch the broken section. The idea was to glue a new piece of Walnut on to the seat frame, but to cut the seat frame back beyond the perforations so that I would have a good solid surface to glue to . The new piece would have all of the perforations in it which I would drill at the end to match the originals.  The new Walnut piece I started off with is seen below.

I followed the general out line of the break on the seat frame and moved it back so that it would completely clear the perforations. This curve was cut to the shape of the seat, but it was cut freehand. The two sections can be seen below after the cut.

Using double sided tape, I adhered the part that I would late discard from the patch to the top of the broken frame component to be used a s a template. This can be seen below.

Using a pattern bit on the router table (the pattern bit can be seen behind the wood. It is blue!) I routed the seat component so that the curve was identical to the unused portion of the patch. After this was done I separated the two pieces and threw away the new wood. The two pieces can be seen in the two photos below. The curve that was cut matches exactly.

The portion of the new wood that was intended to be used as the patch now fit the old wood perfectly. The seat frame and the patch can be seen test fitted below.

This photo shows the patch being glued to the old seat frame.

The two pieces adhered after the glue had dried.

Once the patch was glued in place, I then used the component from the opposite side of the seat upside down as a template to cut the inner curve of the patch. This can be seen below in the next two photos.

This next photo shows the patch with the inner curve cut to match the inside of the original. I was also able to copy the spacing for the perforations onto the new wood while the two sections were adhered with tape.

The completed patch. One last detail was to round the inside edge of the patch so that it would not be sharp against the new cane.

This photo shows the chair after it was reassembled. The patch is on the left and is touched up so that it matches the original finish on the seat frame. The following photo is a of the seat frame in detail.

These last three photos show the completed chair with a new woven cane seat. When I picked up this chair from Chris Frear, my caner, she informed me that she was going to be retiring from chair caning from here on out. I would like to take this opportunity to thank Chris for all of the beautiful work she has done over the years for me and the rest of the local community. She always gave me a perfect new seat and she did so with a smile on her face! Thank you, Chris!

Eastlake Bedroom Set (ca.1880) Part 2

I have finished the Eastlake bedroom set I have been working on and have posted several photos of the chest with mirror, The Washstand, and the Bed below. The removal of the old finish and application of a new shellac finish really brought out the natural beauty of the walnut, especially the burled veneer. The chest and mirror frame have tops made from Tennessee marble which is actually a stone (not a true marble) found and quarried in east Tennessee. The pinkish hue of the stone really complements the walnut as you can see below.

I have also included some photos of the Victorian side chair I was working on with a new cane seat. This chair went to the same customer as the Eastlake bedroom set, so I have included it here.

Before showing photos of the pieces I wanted to include a close up shot of one of the locks. The lock has a very small stamp on it showing a patent date of 1870. I believe these pieces to be made around 1880, but this is definitive proof that they were made post 1870. The image is upside down unfortunately but the date can still be seen.


And now, the photos!

The Chair



The Bed


The Washstand



The three drawer chest with mirror

Eastlake Bedroom Set (ca. 1880) Part 1

Before getting into the details of the bedroom set which I am currently restoring, I thought it might be a good idea to shed some light on the Eastlake style in America. The Eastlake style of furniture is named after Charles Lock Eastlake (b.1836- d.1906) who was an English architect and interior designer and part of the larger arts and crafts movement in England during the second half of the 19th century. His book, Hints on Household Taste in Furniture, Upholstery and other Details, Published in 1872 took its inspiration from Gothic motifs and called for a return to hand made furniture using clean lines and largely rectilinear forms. Eastlake's belief was that Victorian furniture had grown to be overly decorated and that the designs demonstrated in the Rococo and Renaissance Revivals were too flashy, and that furniture design was being dictated not by artistic inspiration, but by what the latest machines were capable of mass producing in the furniture factories of the day. Eastlake and others like him called for a reform in furniture design which pointed towards a more "honest" look, which moved away from the curvy, floral, ornate designs of the previous decades.

The irony of this is that his designs called for straight line moldings and shallow incised carvings, both design elements which were easily produced by the furniture factories of the late 19th century. What resulted was an explosion of "Eastlake" style furniture in America during the last 20 years of the 19th century. While Eastlake himself distanced himself from this approach to his earlier designs, the furniture was widely accepted by the American public, and the major furniture hubs of the late 19th century produced bedroom sets, arm chairs, tables, and just about every other form of furniture in mass quantities.

The furniture I am presently working on is a bedroom set made in one of these furniture hubs during the late 19th century. The primary wood used is black walnut and the secondary wood used throughout is poplar. Each piece in the set employs fine walnut burl veneer as a focal point. What I find so interesting about this furniture style is that it is one of the earliest to be made entirely in a mass production setting and each element is produced by machine. Even the dovetails on the furniture are made by machine. The drawer joinery in fact, is not a dovetail at all, but is called a Knapp Joint. for more on the Knapp Joint, follow this link to an earlier entry on this blog:

http://johnmarkpower.blogspot.com/2010/05/knapp-joint.html

The walnut used on these pieces has beautiful grain and the whole set has great potential. The repairs to the pieces were extensive, so I have decided to break them down into three sections, each section detailing the repairs made to one piece.

The Bed

The finish for all three pieces had deteriorated to the point that I decided to remove it. The upshot of this is that the stain that was in the finish would also come off, showing off the natural color and grain of the walnut.

There were also several repairs that needed to be made to the bed prior to the new finish being put on. Below are some photos of the bed as it came to me and the repairs made to the bed.

The head board.

The side rails.

This close up of the side rails shows a missing section on the left hand rail.

The foot board.

This photo shows a broken section on the foot board.

This photo shows the condition of the original finish. The burl veneer on the headboard was obscured by the old finish.

This photo shows the same veneer after the finish was removed.

This photo shows some molding which had fallen off of the side rail being glued back in place.


The next series of photos show the repair to the missing section of the side rail. Since I had one complete side rail, I was able to make a template by tracing the existing rail onto foam board. After that I cut it out to make the template below.

After I figured out how much of the template was necessary, I traced the pattern onto new wood as seen in the photo below.

This photo shows the template and the new wood cut to shape

Here is the new wood being glued into place.

This photo shows the finished patch after sanding.


As seen in an earlier photo, the foot board was missing a portion of the molding.

This shows the molding cleaned and squared off to receive a patch.

here is a photo of the patch being glued in place...

...and the patch ready to be carved.

This photo shows the head board during the sanding process.

Here is the bed set up to check for loose joinery. The whole bed was tight and the slats were numbered for the best possible fit. The bed is also sanded in this photo and ready for the new finish.

The Chest with Mirror
 These first two photos show the chest and the mirror as they came to me.

In order to refinish the mirror frame, it was necessary to remove the mirror back and glass. When I did this I found this piece of paper glued to the inside of the back. The paper shows the names of several towns in Ohio and their population numbers. Below is a photo of the paper followed by two detail shots that are pretty legible.

The secondary wood in the mirror frame had cracked and warped behind the veneer causing the veneer to tear. This photo shows this section being repaired.

The interior runners for the chest were severely worn .the bottoms of the drawers were also worn. the next few photos shows the repairs made to the drawer runner system.

This photo is of the interior runners removed from the carcass of the chest.

The wear was due to the bottoms of the drawers rubbing wood away, so once the interior runners were removed, the worn wood was cut away and replaced with new wood. Below is a photo of the new wood before it was glued in place.

This photo shows all of the interior runners having new wood added to them.

While the glue was drying on the interior runners, I turned my focus to the drawer bottoms. To display the amount of wear on the drawer bottoms, I put a square up to a drawer side in the photo below. The bottom of the drawer should run parallel to the square and perpendicular to the drawer front.

I removed the damaged area of the drawer by standing the drawers up on end on the table saw. the next two photos show this process. The saw was stopped for the photo!

Once the worn wood was removed, I glued new wood in it's place. This process was done for the chest and the wash stand. Below is a photo of all of the drawers being glued up.

The photo below shows the interior runners with the new wood in place. It is hard to believe, but all of the wood in this photo is poplar. the new wood was stained to match the old.

The next  two photos here show the interior runners being glued in place. I use pieces of wood wedged in place to "clamp"  the interior runners in place while the glue dries.

This photo shows the drawers after the new bottoms were glued in place.

Here is the mirror frame after the sanding was completed.

And this photo shows the chest after sanding with the repaired drawers in place.

The Wash Stand

The wash stand got the same treatment as the rest of the pieces, but the least amount of photo documentation! I did make several repairs to the doors and  the drawers, but I only have a few photo to show for it. One change I made to the stand was to remove an inappropriate glass knob that was attached to the door. I had a suitable brass turnbuckle which was fitted to the chest and looks much more appropriate.

This first photo shows the wash stand as it came to me.

This detail shot shows some loose joinery on the door which was repaired.

This photo shows the wash stand repaired, sanded, and ready for finishing.

It should be noted that the chest and the washstand have marble tops which are not pictured in these repair shots. They will be displayed in the photos of the completed pieces. My next post will show the finishing of these three pieces.