The chair collection at Bowdoin began in 1872 with the arrival of this extraordinary joined great chair. Used for many years as the president’s chair at commencement, it is now recognized as among the nation’s finest examples of seventeenth-century furniture. An English-trained joiner, Searle (1634–1667) is believed to have produced this magnificent chair for his own household in Puritan Massachusetts. After his death in 1667, his widow married joiner Thomas Dennis (1638–1706), who like Searle, was from Devonshire, England. Dennis moved to Ipswich from Portsmouth, New Hampshire, and took over Searle’s workshop, and it is through the Dennis family that the chair descended. The handsomely carved ornament, with anthropomorphic figures decorating the stiles, is based on Renaissance and Baroque strapwork seen on furniture from the region in which Searle trained.

During the eighteenth century an expanding world economy based on trade, shipping, and manufacturing created a rising middle class eager to signal their status. The Hallowells of Boston were one such American family. Not only was Benjamin Hallowell depicted by New England’s leading colonial artist, but the elegantly attired gentleman was also displaying his wealth through the fabrics, among the most expensive materials within a household. In addition to his clothes, the side chair in which he is seated is upholstered
in a lush imported English covering, which further underscores his affluence.

This English side chair was influenced by Dutch and French furniture with their fine veneers. Simple yet elegant features include a scrolled crest rail, carved shells on the cabriole legs, and an unusual curved stretcher. Its original needlework upholstery depicts the Sacrifice of Isaac, an Old Testament story often selected for ladies’ fine handwork. These chairs descended in the Dennis family, as did Searle’s joined great chair (Fig. 2), but it is not known whether this pair was owned by the family in early eighteenth-century Massachusetts or was acquired at a later time.

Sets of seating furniture were designed during the Victorian era for specific rooms in a house. This armchair was originally part of a set of either six or eight pieces, and its size indicates it would have been intended only for the head of household, much like the Searle great chair in figure 2 was intended. Featured prominently is the newly introduced coil-spring seat construction. This technological innovation revolutionized chair design and upholstery techniques, bringing added comfort and luxury to fashion-conscience upper and the new middle class eager to show status.

The two circa 1830 Boston armchairs shown in this 1890s painting furnished the mercantile offices of Theophilus Walker, also owner of Gore Place, Waltham, Massachusetts. His nieces dedicated Bowdoin’s Walker Art Building in his name (now the home of the Bowdoin College Museum of Art). That these handsome but out-of-date dining chairs figured so prominently in Walker’s place of business between 1850 and his death forty years later reveals his appreciation for their classical aesthetic and regard for their history. One chair was donated to Bowdoin in 1896 by Walker’s nieces and heirs.

This fine example of American Aesthetic Movement furniture was made for the extravagant William H. Vanderbilt mansion in New York, which took up an entire city block. The German-born Herter Brothers, Gustave (1830–1898) and Christian (1839–1883), were furniture makers as well as the leading interior decorators of the Gilded Age; Vanderbilt was their largest client. The beautiful figured dark rosewood of this chair is ornamented with inlaid satinwood flowers in the Japonesque taste, a popular aesthetic after Japan’s participation in the 1876 Centennial. The fascination, or “cult of Japan,” was in particular favor during the 1870s and 1880s, the time at which the brothers were decorating the Vanderbilt residence.

Some chairs originally acquired for use in Bowdoin College campus buildings are now valued for their Arts and Crafts aesthetics. One such set of two armchairs and ten side chairs dates from between 1899 and 1916 and were made at Gustav Stickley’s Craftsman Workshops in upstate New York. Historic college photographs reveal their early use, for a time, in the college’s Sargent Gymnasium; their sturdy construction and no-frills aesthetic apparently suited the rugged environment. It was the “honest,” solid craftsmanship that was appealing in their day as well, born out of a desire to highlight the craft aspect of construction in contrast to the mass marketed furniture of the Victorian era.

A hockey fan, Frank Gehry designed his cross check™ armchair as part of a collection named after terms used in the game. He named others after the hat trick, high sticking, and the power play. The thin strips also relate to the shape of hockey sticks. This chair is an especially appropriate choice for Bowdoin College where that icy sport reigns in winter. Gehry’s bentwood design, inspired by the apple crates he knew in childhood recalls innovative chairs of the nineteenth century, such as Samuel Gragg’s bentwood “elastic chair” of 1808.

In 1919 a group of artists, architects, and designers led by Walter Gropius (1883–1969) started the innovative Bauhaus school in Weimar, Germany. As the school evolved, tubular steel, laminated plywood, and plastic resins—developed for industrial use—replaced traditional wood and upholstery and created a new ahistorical approach to designing “interior equipment,” as the architect Le Corbusier designated furniture. Gropius left Germany in 1934 to escape the Nazi regime, and in 1937 relocated to Lincoln, Massachusetts. He was soon joined by one-time student, instructor at the Bauhaus’ Dessau school, and then colleague, Marcel Breuer (1902–1981), who taught alongside Gropius at the Harvard Graduate School of Design and built a house next door to him in Lincoln. While in Germany, Breuer had been head of the furniture workshop in Dessau and was in charge of designing furniture for the school buildings, including the masters’, and director’s houses, the latter of which was for Gropius. When Gropius moved to Lincoln, he brought the furniture with him, including these dining chairs. They are superb examples of the Bauhaus philosophy. It takes a highly innovative approach to its design rather than regimented and following earlier aesthetic sources. Its clean, industrial design, with form following function, endures today. One will be on view in Sit Down!