THE old-fashioned idea that a collector must arrange his treasures grouped in one spot no longer obtains. I recall asking one who had returned from a visit to a very interesting house if the host and hostess were collectors of antiques, curios, or rare objets d’art. “Oh, no,” was the reply, “I don’t think so. They showed me many beautiful things, but I didn’t see anything that looked like a collection.” Later I learned that this home contained one of the most notable collections of early furniture in America! All these pieces, of course, had been considered as articles entering into the adornment of this home and not merely as objects gathered clutter-wise into the semblance of an old curiosity shop. Even our museums are now often exhibiting their furniture collections arranged in such a manner as to carry out a complete idea of the original intention of the various pieces, displaying them in reconstructed rooms or in the counterpart of a portion of a room.

Probably no piece of furniture holds greater interest for the specialized or even the general collector than the chair. Its ancestry is venerable, but its remote antiquity need not be dwelt upon at length here. It is true that in a magnificent Louis Quatorze drawing-room, perfectly appointed and historically correct, the introduction of a cottage chair of the Windsor type would be as displeasing an anachronism as putting a wild thrush to neighbor with all the parrots of an avairy. On the other hand, the drawing-room of the average typical home in good taste the world over might contain a Chippendale chair, a Carolean settee, a Sheraton card-table, a Louis XIII stool, and an Italian Renaissance table, and yet be agreeably pleasing and pleasantly inviting if skill, good taste, and common sense had entered into the character of arrangements.

The collector who wishes to devote some attention to old furniture would do well to begin with old chairs. All the old chairs (the good ones and the fine ones) have not been “collected up” in the sense that they are permanently retired from business. When once they get into the museums, of course, they stay there, but even museums are not omnivorous. The acquiring of supremely rare or unique objects is by no means the only pleasure to be derived from collecting. In fact, it is one of its least thrilling forms, being measured more by dollars and cents and the commerce of things than it is by the mere joy of acquisition.

Some one has estimated that every collection which does not go into a museum changes hands every twenty years on an average. It is a fact that collecting in America to-day is infinitely more easy of accomplishment than it was a century ago. In New York, for instance, the auction sales of a single recent season presented to the collector more opportunities than could have come his way in six seasons years ago. It is a mistake to suppose that all good “chances” have passed; they are, as a matter of fact, just about beginning in America. We are told that collectors have ransacked farmhouses and old houses in the East for interesting pieces of antique furniture. That is true, but the process means only a change of location and not an elimination of possibilities.

The collector of old chairs can easily become familiar with the various forms of peculiarities of design which mark the different styles and periods, as may be seen by even a passing glance at the accompanying illustrations. Indeed, the ear-marks that distinguish certain pieces of furniture of the historic periods and distinct styles from others are, happily, so numerous that the art of identification becomes comparatively an easy one. Beginners will, to be sure, often come across modern reproductions of genuine old chairs. Not all of these—in fact, comparatively few of them—were made with intent to defraud. Occasionally some unscrupulous or ignorant person will offer a modern piece as genuine, but your true collector need hardly be deceived, except in rare instances, by attempted impositions. The form of the master furniture designers of yesterday has never been surpassed. There is nothing in modern design more beautiful or so beautiful as many of the old chairs of Chippendale, Sheraton, and Hepplewhite, and likewise of the early English and the French periods. Realizing this, the furniture-makers of to-day at home and abroad have sought to reproduce the best of these antique pieces for the service and the benefit of the modern home-maker, obviously as undisguised reproductions.

The collector who studies old chairs will glean many a helpful hint from these modern reproductions. The fine ones faithfully carried out are really worth collecting in themselves, as accessory to a collection of other pieces which the collector has been fortunate in obtaining in the originals. If you

chance to come across an old chair fine in the lines of its design, do not give it up as hopeless should you notice that it is disfigured with paint, dowdy, broken-down upholstery, and the like. A good restorer of old furniture will be able to work wonders with a piece of the sort. I remember discovering an old chair so hidden under the disguise of paint, putty, and car-plush as to have discouraged any but a discriminating enthusiasm. When this chair was turned over to a restorer he delivered it from its bondage of humiliation and it came forth an excellent and treasured genuine example of the finest Hepplewhite style. The “stuffing” had completely hidden a splendid ostrich-plume back.

To collect anything sensibly requires an interest in the available data concerning it. One might as well collect buttons manufactured in 1920 as to pay no attention to the study of things gathered together in pleasurable pursuit. So, too, it is with chairs. A chair-collector looks beyond the mere utilitarian fact that each chair can be sat upon with comfort, or can’t be.

First of all he must acquaint himself with the various periods: Italian Renaissance, French Renaissance, Flemish, Spanish, Elizabethan, Carolean, and Jacobean (Tudor to Stuart), William and Mary, Queen Anne, the Early Georgian, the French periods of the Henris, the Louis, the Empire, the styles of Chippendale, Adam, Hepplewhite, and Sheraton, and the early American forms.

The collector will find many excellent works in English by eminent authorities on furniture, all of which devote proper space to the subject of the chairs of the particular period of which they are treating. There the chair enthusiast will learn that walnut came to be widely used in English chairs after 1650; that Hepplewhite suggested haircloth for chair coverings; that the Carolean crown is a distinguishing feature of the Restoration period; that Queen Anne chairs are marked by simplicity, their beauty depending mainly on their fine lines, graceful curves, delicate veneering, and restraint where inlay is used; that mahogany came into use between 1720 and 1725, and not into general use before 1730; that Chippendale’s best pieces were made between 1730 and 1760; that in all real Chippendale ball-and-claw terminations the claw is carved to suggest vividly a gripping strength, and not as merely resting passively on the ball as in the imitations and in nearly all modern reproductions. These are but a few of the many interesting facts every old-furniture collector should know, points that enable one to collect chairs intelligently and with joy in the pursuit of a delectable hobby that is also a very practical one.