Hall Chair

c. 1900

Charles Rohlfs (American, 1853–1936)
Buffalo, New York

The son of a New York cabinetmaker, Charles Rohlfs spent his early years working as a designer of cast-iron stoves and furnaces while pursuing an acting career in his spare time. In 1884 he married the novelist Anna Katharine Greene and moved with her to Buffalo, where he took up woodworking after being unable to afford high-quality furniture. What began as a personal venture had become a commercial endeavor by 1898. The first of Rohlfs’s exhibitions to receive national attention was held at Chicago’s Marshall Field and Company department store. Among the many items for sale was a hall chair similar to this example, which calls to mind the dramatically attenuated furniture of the Scottish architect-designer Charles Rennie Mackintosh.

Status: On View, Gallery 177
Department: Arts of the Americas

Artist: Charles Rohlfs
Title: Hall Chair
Place: Buffalo (Object made in:)
Date Dates are not always precisely known, but the Art Institute strives to present this information as consistently and legibly as possible. Dates may be represented as a range that spans decades, centuries, dynasties, or periods and may include qualifiers such as c. (circa) or BCE.: c. 1900
Medium: Oak with black stain
Inscriptions: Stamped twice, once in red and once in black, on front apron within a bow saw: "R"
Dimensions: 144.8 × 48.3 × 38.7 cm (57 × 19 × 15 1/4 in.)
Credit Line: Gift of the Antiquarian Society through Mrs. Eric Oldberg and Mr. and Mrs. Morris S. Weeden
Reference Number: 1998.2
IIIF Manifest The International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF) represents a set of open standards that enables rich access to digital media from libraries, archives, museums, and other cultural institutions around the world. Learn more.: https://api.artic.edu/api/v1/artworks/149777/manifest.json

Judith A. Barter, et al., American Arts at The Art Institute of Chicago: From Colonial Times to World War I (Art Institute of Chicago, 1998), 318–19, cat. 168 (ill.).
Brandy S. Culp, “Hall Chair,” Art Institute of Chicago Museum Studies 30, no. 1 (2004), 22–23 (ill.).
Judith A. Barter, ed., Apostles of Beauty: Arts and Crafts from Britain to Chicago, exh. cat. (Art Institute of Chicago, 2009), 95–96, 198, cat. 111, fig. 14 (ill.).

Art Institute of Chicago, Apostles of Beauty: Arts and Crafts from Britain to Chicago, Nov. 7, 2009–Jan. 31, 2010, cat. 111.

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Date Dates are not always precisely known, but the Art Institute strives to present this information as consistently and legibly as possible. Dates may be represented as a range that spans decades, centuries, dynasties, or periods and may include qualifiers such as c. (circa) or BCE.

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IIIF Manifest The International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF) represents a set of open standards that enables rich access to digital media from libraries, archives, museums, and other cultural institutions around the world.

Learn more.