make / manufacturer: Henkel Harris model name / number: Cherry QR Code Link to This Post Set of 6 Henkel Harris Queen Anne Cherry Dining Room Chairs, consisting of 2 arm chairs and 4 side chairs. All are in like new condition!! This section is from the book "", by Harold Donaldson Eberlein And Abbot McClure. Also available from Amazon: .The typical Queen Anne chair is a distinct and strongly characteristic piece of furniture not to be confounded with anything else. It is also a singularly beautiful and graceful creation and exceedingly comfortable. It has cabriole legs and a fiddle-splatted, hooped and "spooned" back (Key V, 7 and 10; The uprights of the back, a few inches above the seat, break at a sharp angle and curve in towards the splat only to swell out again in a graceful, sweeping curve at the top, which goes over in a bow without break of line to the other upright (Fig. 4). Variations there were, of course, but the general type was unmistakable. The earlier chairs had stretchers (Fig. 4, B) to underbrace them, but these were dispensed with in most cases not long after the beginning of the period.
Instead of a stretcher between the front legs there was a recessed stretcher (Fig. 4, B) connecting the two side stretchers, shaped, turned or moulded and either flat or rising. After the early disappearance of the stretcher it did not appear again, except in the cheaper turned furniture of farmhouse type, until Chippendale styles revived it.Early Queen Anne cabriole legs sometimes had hoof feet (Fig. 4, I, Chap. Ill), solid or cloven, and occasionally Spanish scroll feet (Fig. 4, G, Chap. Ill), the latter form occurring especially in early. New England chairs of the period, with straight turned legs. The usual form of foot, however, was the "Dutch" or club foot in one of its varieties (Fig. 1); pointed, slipper or round-cloven hoof feet appeared again later when claw and ball and paw feet came into vogue. The web foot (Fig. 8, A) occurs at this time. The common motif of carved decoration for the cabriole knee was the cockle shell, except in the cases noted in the introduction to this chapter.
Back legs were either quadrangular or rounded.Fig. 4. A, Early Queen Anne Arm Chair; B, Early Queen Anne Side Chair with Stretchers.Fig. 5. Typical Shapes of Queen Anne Chair-seats.Seats varied in shape (Fig. 5) but were usually rounded or had at least rounded corners in front, and sometimes compound curves were introduced, giving the front of the seat a serpentine outline and projecting the rounded corners like the bastions of a fortress. Seat rails or frames were ordinarily straight, except for the carved shell ornament often found in the middle of the front.Backs also varied in shape but held to the main characteristics of outline till the influence of Chippendale and his contemporaries began to be strongly felt. Some of the early hooped backs, though "spooned" in profile, had uprights rising straight from seat to cresting without angular or concave break like the side of a fiddle. Then, again, there are instances of two such sharp curving breaks (Fig. 6) in each upright instead of the customary one.
We sometimes find double-rail hooped backs (Key V, 5) where the splat terminates in a hooped cresting and above this, quite separate from it, is another hooped top rail connecting with the upright. In the New England and New York rush-bottomed chairs with straight turned legs, Spanish feet and turned stretchers, the pronouncedly Dutch form of back, with the uprights of unbroken line (Fig. 8, B),was usually found. The banister-back, being a vigorous and virile type, persisted for a time.Fig. 6. Back and Leg of Chair typical of Late William and Mary and Early Queen Anne Epoch.At different dates the splats displayed variations in form, but an approximation to the fiddle shape was always traceable. Nearly all of the early splats were plain, often covered with veneer of burr walnut. Later, in the decorated period (see Introduction to Chapter) ornamentation was added, at first on the edges and, last of all, came the pierced splat (Fig. 7, A) in the process of development.Fig. 7. A, Pierced Splat-back Arm Chair of Early Georgian Type;
B, Square-back Upholstered Chair of Queen Anne-Early Georgian Period.Many of the earliest hoop-back chairs retain a high carved or moulded cresting above the splat, a survival of the high and elaborate cresting of William and Mary days (Fig. 6). But this cresting soon disappeared and we find in its stead only a simple cockle shell (Key V, 10), or else a hollowed space suggesting a head rest (Fig.4,A).Wing chairs had a comfortable flare (Key V, 4), easy, flowing lines and cabriole legs, for the most part without stretchers. Some of the upholstered arm chairs with wooden arms had backs that followed the curving contour of side chairs. Arms were shaped and flared (Fig. 4, A) outward, the supports being broadly chamfered and curved and attached to the sides of the seat frame. In the rush bottomed arm chairs with straight turned legs, the arm support was an extension of the front leg.Fig. 8. A, Pierced Splat-back Chair; B, American Rush-bottomed Colonial Chair of Period with Dutch Feeling; C, Windsor Chair of Early Form.By Courtesy of Mrs. H. Genet Taylor, Camden, N. J.;