A Brewster Chair is a style of
turned chair made in mid-17th-century ("Pilgrim Century")
New England
New England is a region comprising six states in the Northeastern United States: Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont. It is bordered by the state of New York (state), New York to the west and by the Can ...
, United States.
Origin
The "Brewster Chair" was named after
Willam Brewster, one of the
Pilgrim
A pilgrim (from the Latin ''peregrinus'') is a traveler (literally one who has come from afar) who is on a journey to a holy place. Typically, this is a physical journey (often on foot) to some place of special significance to the adherent of ...
fathers who landed in
Plymouth, Massachusetts in 1620. In 1830 the Brewster family of Duxbury donated Elder Brewster's original chair to
Pilgrim Hall Museum in Plymouth, where it remains today. His chair was created in New England between 1630 and 1660 of American
white ash. Other similar New England chairs from the 17th century have been named after this piece.
In the 1970s, Rhode Island sculptor
Armand LaMontagne produced a notorious fake Brewster Chair that fooled the national experts at the
Henry Ford Museum
The Henry Ford (also known as the Henry Ford Museum of American Innovation and Greenfield Village, and as the Edison Institute) is a history museum complex in the Detroit suburb of Dearborn, Michigan, United States. The museum collection contains ...
, which acquired the piece.
Gallery
Image:Elder Brewster Chair and Peregrine White cradle.jpg, The Pilgrim Hall Museum owns the original Elder Brewster Chair and Peregrine White cradle.
References
External links
Original Brewster Chair at the Pilgrim Hall MuseumLaMontagne's Fake Chair"Furniture of the Pilgrim Century" by Wallace Nutting (Marshall Jones: Boston, 1921) pg 182-184
(Google Books search)
Chairs
Massachusetts culture
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