Merri Lou Schaumann, Plank Bottom Chairs and Chairmakers: South Central Pennsylvania 1800-1880. Carlisle, PA: The Cumberland County Historical Society, 2009. Photos, 136 pgs., $29.95.
In Plank Bottom Chairs and Chairmakers: South Central Pennsylvania 1800-1880, Merri Lou Schaumann presents a thorough analysis of this prolific furniture form, with an emphasis on the Cumberland Valley. The book's five chapters include a history of the chairmaking business, styles and construction of the chair form, methods of painting and decoration, design motifs, and a directory of known nineteenth-century local makers.
Building on previous scholarship of a more general nature, Schaumann accesses primary source material to add much local detail to the existing body of knowledge. With an array of information in an easily readable format, the book should find a broad audience, especially given its subject matter. As outlined in the introduction, this highly utilitarian form was prolifically produced for a broad clientele in the nineteenth-century and has survived in large numbers.
Schaumann's examination of chair production in the Cumberland Valley is concentrated in four population centers: Carlisle, Shippensburg, Newville, and Mechanicsburg. She gives informative details on the business of chairmaking, including how craftsmen arranged their shops, advertised and sold their products, and often struggled to survive in a competitive marketplace. The chapters describing the chairs' various styles, forms, construction methods, and decorative elements are profusely illustrated with full-color photographs. These should be particularly helpful in attributing unmarked chairs to specific makers. What separates different kinds of plank bottom chairs, especially in the marketplace, is typically the decoration. The author points out that all too often period chairs do not retain their original paint-decorated surface. Over the course of generations, through hard use or changing tastes, chairs were often stripped of paint and refinished.
This paper was originally presented at the Phi Alpha Theta National History Honor Society Conference, Albuquerque, New Mexico. The paper, slightly modified for Cumberland County History, is presented here.