As a graduate student at the Winterthur Museum Program in Early American Culture, I was privileged to work with the country’s premiere collection of American furniture, including the best examples of the styles most popular with cabinetmakers today-Queen Anne and Chippendale. Even in this setting, though, I was always drawn to the neoclassical pieces of [...]

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The windsor chair is a study in contrasts. Originally designed as an artless furnishing, it is now considered to be a sophisticated example of modern chair making. The simple elements of a Windsor-the sculpted seat and the hand-shaped legs, stretchers, arm posts, and spindles-belie the precise engineering required to assemble it. And despite its relatively [...]

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The four-poster bed is a dramatic and imposing piece of furniture that descends from the canopy beds of the Byzantine and medieval periods. Once, only heads of families could occupy a bed with a full canopy; others contented themselves with half-canopy beds, or unadorned beds. The use of a canopied bed, then, was certainly a [...]

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The Pembroke table is thought to have originated in the mid-18th Century when Lady Pembroke commissioned the great Georgian cabinetmaker and master carver Thomas Chippendale to fashion a small casual table for her. The legs of the Pembroke table feature strips of dark banding, framed by thin string inlay of a lighter wood. Its graceful [...]

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In material objects such as furniture, I believe beauty is born from pleasing proportion and the harmonious relationship between curved and straight lines. Straight lines impart structure, mass, and solidity. Curved lines lend movement, elegance, and grace. To me, Queen Anne-style furniture presents the perfect union of straight and curved components. Simple lines, graceful curves, [...]

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