Windsor Chair Repair

I was recently entrusted with the repair of a windsor chair that has been in a family's possession for three generations. The chair is a Nichols and Stone sack back windsor made in Gardener Massachusetts.  The Nichols and Stone name goes back to the 18th century, but production really ramped up in the 1860's when they opened a furniture factory in Massachusetts.  They had a reputation for making sturdy all wood furniture and built a business that lasted into the 21st century.  It's difficult to date this particular chair but the family reports that it's over 100 years old.

The chair is made entirely of hard maple and the quality of the wood has contributed to its longevity.  Virtually every mortise and tenon joint was loose and some were totally disengaged.  Luckily, none of the tenons were damaged and all of the pieces were whole.  I suspected that the original glue was hide glue, and confirmed this once I got it into the shop.  The original finish was a stain applied to the whole chair followed by shellac.

The first rule of art conservation is to "do no harm" to the original work. The concept for the repair of furniture is similar, with the additional criteria that it must be returned to active use, to accept all the strain and abuse for which it was originally made.  This particular chair has a lovely patina acquired over it's more than a century of use. "Refinishing" the chair would strip it of its character, all the hints of it's history, the various nicks and scrapes from long past incidents, the wood burnished and blond showing through the darker layers where hands have grasped the arms and worn the surfaces. I took great pains to maintain the original finish.

Hide glue is reversible.  Modern glues are often stronger than the surrounding wood and when failure occurs, it's typically a wood failure.  Hide glue, even a hundred plus years old can be reconstituted which means that joints can be separated with steam or warm water.  Dust and loose debris was cleaned from the joints, but I didn't have to scrape back to bare wood because the new hide glue adheres to the old.  I had to disassemble the chair in order to refit the mortises and tenons.  The arm posts and back hoop are wedged tenons.  These had to be removed in order to separate the parts, and the top of the arm post has a finish nail inserted into the arm and tenon to pin it in place.   Each piece was numbered before disassembly so I could correctly put it back together. 

A new batch of hide glue was prepared, and I began the process of reassembly.  The legs and stretchers go together easily, but there were a total of fourteen spindles that had to glued and set into the arm and hoop.
This is a very comfortable chair.  Hopefully, with these repairs it will continue its service for another century.