First Exploration of the Region’s Vernacular Chairs to Open This Week
Winchester, VA, 12/14/09…The first exhibition devoted to the study of nineteenth-century Shenandoah Valley vernacular chairs is expected to draw widespread interest when it opens December 18 in the Museum of the Shenandoah Valley (MSV) in Winchester, Virginia. The precedent-setting exhibition—Come In and Have a Seat: Vernacular Chairs of the Shenandoah Valley—will remain on display in the MSV through June 20, 2010.
The exhibition, funded in part by a grant from the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities, has been more than two years in the making. Guest curator for the project is Jeffrey S. Evans, Broadway, Virginia, a noted scholar and collector of Shenandoah Valley furniture, pottery, and decorative arts.
The exhibition will present 43 chairs on loan from nine different private collections; most chairs are on public display for the first time in this exhibition. Included are a number of chairs from Jeffrey and Beverley Evans’s widely-respected private collection. Interactive elements in the exhibition include reproduction Shenandoah Valley chairs where visitors may “have a seat.” Visitors will also be invited to construct a chair using large-scale puzzle pieces.
A re-creation of an 1850s chair shop—featuring authentic tools and furnishings from the Adam Kersh Shop of Augusta County, Virginia (active ca. 1860–1905), and on loan from the Frontier Culture Museum in Staunton, Virginia—is also included in the exhibition.
The exhibition will be accompanied by a catalogue, to be unveiled in March of 2010. Authored by Exhibition Curator Evans, the book will include contributions by scholars W. Wayne Anderson, Scott Hamilton Suter, PhD, and MSV Curator Naomi Knappenberger, PhD. Discounted advance sale orders for the book will begin at the exhibition opening on December 18.
A variety of related lectures and events are planned in conjunction with the exhibition. On January 8, 2010, at that evening’s Galleries at Night event, Curator Evans will present an illustrated lecture at 7 p.m. in the Museum’s Reception Hall. At the event, he will present chairs from his private collection that are not on display in the exhibition. Galleries at Night events, which take place from 4 until 9 p.m., allow visitors to enjoy special lectures and entertainment, tour the galleries in the evening, enjoy a light dinner or dessert in the Museum Café, and shop in the Museum Store. Visitors may also purchase a glass of wine at these popular, festive events.
At the March 12 Galleries at Night event, the MSV will present a panel discussion featuring the scholars who have contributed to the exhibition catalogue. Then, on Saturday, June 19, the MSV will sponsor a Chair Fair. Exhibition Curator Evans and other Valley chair experts will be on hand from 11 a.m. until 3 p.m. that day to evaluate chairs brought to the Museum by Valley residents. Chairs with a long history of Valley ownership are especially welcomed and will be useful to the Museum’s ongoing research. More details about all events will be announced at a later date.
Exhibition Findings and Scholarship
By 1800, the Shenandoah Valley was home to many craftsmen of German, Swiss, English, Irish, and Scottish descent. Using familiar European craft traditions, these craftsmen made durable and comfortable chairs, but they also were influenced by fashionable designs from cities like Philadelphia and Baltimore. Their creative blending of old and new ideas resulted in distinctive chair styles that speak of the Valley’s diverse cultural heritage and are called “vernacular.”
This exhibition explores the history and development of the three basic Valley vernacular chair designs: ladder-back, Windsor, and fancy chairs.
In preparation for the exhibition, Guest Curator Evans and Museum staff poured through census records and other documents to discover names and locations of early Shenandoah Valley chairmakers. This information, combined with clear distribution patterns gleaned from the extensive study collection of more than 250 Valley chairs—assembled by Jeffrey Evans over some thirty years—as well as traditions drawn from family written and oral histories, allowed many chairs to be attributed for the first time to specific makers. Findings concerning the extent of activities of the Fravel, Burket, and Kelley families of chairmakers are of particular note. New understanding related to the Fravel family’s scope of Valley chairmaking is considered to be an especially significant contribution to current scholarship. In all, the history of eight chairmakers or chairmaking families is presented in the exhibition.
The exhibition also newly establishes the range and extent of fancy chair production in the Valley. While fancy-chair production had been known to exist in Winchester, research for this exhibition establishes that New Market craftspeople were also producing fancy chairs. The earliest of these chairs are related to those produced in Winchester. While the New Market fancy chairs are slightly more substantial in construction, their exuberant decorations are somewhat less refined than the famous Baltimore painted chairs of the same period. Based on the findings of this exhibition, Curator Evans predicts that some chairs now identified as Baltimore in origin may be reattributed to New Market. The exhibition also identifies the various periods of fancy-chair production in the Valley and presents the attributes that define each period.
Guest Curator Jeff Evans is president of Jeffrey S. Evans & Associates, Mt. Crawford, Virginia. Museums that have sought his expertise in early American glass and eighteenth- and nineteenth- century Shenandoah Valley furniture, pottery, and glass include the Corning Museum of Glass, The Sandwich Glass Museum, and The Museum of Early Southern Decorative Arts (MESDA), among others. Mr. Evans presented a lecture, “Shenandoah Valley of Virginia Seating Forms of the Late 18th to Early 20th Centuries,” at the 2009 MESDA Furniture Seminar and was guest curator and author of the related catalogue for another ground-breaking exhibition, “A Great Deal of Stone & Earthen Ware” at the Shenandoah Valley Folk Art & Heritage Center, the Harrisonburg-Rockingham Historical Society, Dayton, Virginia. He has compiled more than 25 public auction catalogues of American glass and Americana and has provided contributions to numerous antiques reference volumes and publications.
A distinguished team of scholars advised Mr. Evans, MSV Curator Naomi Knappenberger, PhD, and the MSV staff in their research for this exhibition. They include: Dale Couch, senior archivist and southern decorative arts scholar, Georgia Department of Archives and History; Milly McGehee, Riderwood, Maryland, an antiques dealer and decorative arts scholar with expertise in Baltimore painted fancy chairs; Sumpter Priddy III, Alexandria, Virginia, an antiques dealer and scholar with expertise in Virginia decorative arts; Scott Suter, PhD, assistant professor of English, Bridgewater College, Bridgewater, Virginia, a scholar of Shenandoah Valley material culture; David Puckett, curator of Frontier Culture Museum in Staunton, Virginia; John McAllister, M.D., Winchester, Virginia, retired neurosurgeon and furniture craftsman with expertise in the history and construction of chairs of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries; D. Gregory Bott, M.D., Winchester, Virginia, a collector with expertise in the material culture of the Shenandoah Valley; J. Roderick Moore, director, Blue Ridge Institute and Museum, Ferrum College, Ferrum, Virginia, with expertise in the culture of the Virginia Backcountry; and Jeffrey Lefkowitz, Winchester, Virginia, retired graphic artist and furniture craftsman with expertise in the history and construction of chairs of the eighteenth and nineteenth century.
The Museum of the Shenandoah Valley, including its Glen Burnie Historic House and Gardens, is located at 901 Amherst Street in Winchester, Virginia and is open from 10 a.m. until 4 p.m. Tuesday through Sunday (closed December 24 & 25 and January 1). The Museum is open year-round, and the house and gardens are open March through November. The MSV includes eleven gallery rooms, a café, and museum store. Gallery admission is free on Wednesday mornings from 10 a.m. until noon. For all others, an adult combination ticket to visit the house, gardens, and Museum is $12; senior and youth combination tickets are $10 each. Admission to the Museum galleries only is $8 for adults and $6 for seniors and youth. For additional information call 888-556-5799, ext. 235 (toll free), or visit www.ShenandoahMuseum.org.
–END–
