Replies

1. 
   doorboy | Feb 16, 2009 07:20pm | #1

   http://clarksoutdoorchairs.com/adirondack_chair_history_.html
   Interesting project. My first thought was the aforementioned Adirondack chair, but according to it's known history, the first patent showed up around 1903, about the same time that the American Arts and Crafters were cranking up. However, the Europeans predate them quite a bit.
   Keep us posted. I want to be educated.
2. 
   doorboy | Feb 16, 2009 08:07pm | #2

   Look into the history of the Windsor chair also. I believe it dates back to the 17th century. The seat usually slopes towards the back.
1. 
   philroe | Feb 17, 2009 06:15pm | #4

   Good thought!Using a little imagination, but never having made a Windsor, I would think that the last step is to level the legs. In which case the sloping seat could have been arrived at by accident. In computing terms, a bug that became a feature!

1. 
   Bill_Anderson | Feb 18, 2009 12:25am | #5

   You do in fact level the legs as a last step,  but this also involves using a level or straightedge balanced on the seat to establish a height differential between the front and back legs.  All of this is set up with small wedges under the feet to make the chair level side-to-side and front-to-back.  Then each leg is marked with a scribe to  the same height relative to the surface the chair is resting on. 

1. 
   philroe | Feb 18, 2009 07:31pm | #6

   Bill, thanks!What I was wondering was whether some early maker decided to level from side to side first. Then, having got that right, but not yet got around to leveling his creation front to back, he sat in it and realised how comfortable it was.This is pure speculation of course, but I am struck by how subtle the height difference is, usually much less than an inch, but what a big difference it makes. Then I wonder, how you do think of something like that? Making a framed chair, you would cut all the legs to the same length in the first place, and making them different would never occur to you.

1. 
   Samson | Feb 18, 2009 10:03pm | #8

   John Brown shows this process in detail in his book:

   View Image

3. 
   Tinkerer3 | Feb 17, 2009 09:27am | #3

   ".....when chairs were first made with the front of the seat higher that the back....."

   Way, way before you think.  You see when Adam and Eve were chased out of the Garden of Eden, Adam stopped just outside of the gate to ponder his experiences.  As he sat down on a fallen log next to a tree he noticed how comfortable it was with the tree to give his back rest and the fallen log to support his body.  It was all that more comfortable on that the log as the seat was sloped downward towards the rear.  But Adam and his wife had to make a living so moved on.  Many years passed before the practice of designing this shape of chairs became common.  The End  

   
   

   ---

   Edited 2/17/2009 1:28 am ET by Tinkerer3

4. 
   stanley2 | Feb 18, 2009 08:24pm | #7

   See Jeff Miller's Chairmaking Design available from FWW.  As an aside, when visiting Pasadena during Craftsman Weekend last October where I was able to mingle with Greene & Greene experts, the common view was that their chairs, while beautiful, were very uncomfortable.

1. 
   philroe | Feb 22, 2009 01:56am | #9

   Yes, some of the Arts and Crafts chairs were really uncomfortable, for example Frank Lloyd Wright employed only horizontal seats because of his Prairie School philosophy. But some of the early English AC chairs were clearly sloped, for example some of those by the Cotswold school. Ive attached a picture from a dealers catalogue. Its late nineteenth century but he doesnt give more than that.