Revolving Windsor Armchair

Artist/Maker: Unknown

Created: c. 1775

Origin/Purchase: Philadelphia

Materials: poplar, mahogany, maple, oak, and hickory

Dimensions: H before restoration: 101.6; H of seat: 36.8; D of seat: 58.4 (40 × 14 1/2 × 23 in.)

Provenance: Thomas Jefferson; by descent to Martha Jefferson Randolph; by gift to J.R. Kane; by gift to the American Philosophical Society in 1838

Historical Notes: When Jefferson returned to Monticello in 1776, he brought with him an uncommon revolving Windsor chair which he used "at Philadelphia while preparing the Declaration of Independence."^[1] At Monticello this consequential chair was used to form one of two reading-and-writing arrangements. The chair was apparently first used with a Windsor bench, and later with a sofa believed to have been made by Thomas Burling.

This comb-back chair, so called for the resemblance of the crest rail to a hair comb, is rare for its highly remarkable revolving mechanism, which probably was specified to the (unidentified) maker by Jefferson. The chair has two seats and "rotates on a central iron spindle and on rollers made of window sash pulleys set in a groove between the two seats."^[2] The chair has volute-carved ears at the ends of the crest rail and knuckle handholds on the arms. Unlike most comb-back Philadelphia Windsors, Jefferson's chair has eleven spindles rather than the usual nine forming its back. The seat is round, rather than the customary D-shape with a pommel and "dished out" seat.

Later the chair was vastly altered in Monticello's joinery. A new base with bamboo-turned legs, made either in the joinery or taken from another chair, replaced the original baluster-turned legs. The writing paddle was probably added when Jefferson switched the Windsor couch for the sofa.

- Text from Stein, Worlds, 264

Further Sources

• Evans, Nancy Goyne. American Windsor Chairs. New York: Hudson Hills Press in association with the Henry Francis du Pont Winterthur Museum, 1996.