Brewster Chair

A 17th-century Brewster Chair

A Brewster Chair is a style of turned chair made in mid-17th century ("Pilgrim Century") New England.

Origin

The "Brewster Chair" was named after Willam Brewster, one of the Pilgrim 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. Other similar New England chairs from the 17th century have been named after this piece.^[1]

In the 1970s, Rhode Island sculptor, Armand LaMontagne, produced a notorious fake Brewster Chair that fooled the national experts at the Henry Ford Museum, which acquired the piece.^[1][2]

Gallery

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  The Pilgrim Hall Museum owns the original Elder Brewster Chair and Peregrine White cradle

References

1. Wallace Nutting, Furniture of the Pilgrim century: 1620-1720, including colonial utensils and hardware (Marshall Jones Company, 1921) http://books.google.com/books?id=K3MvAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA182&dq=%22brewster+chair%22#PPA182,M1
2. "The Brewster Chair and the game of "Fool The Experts"". Henry Ford Museum. April 1, 2000. Retrieved 20 October 2010.

External links

• Original Brewster Chair at the Pilgrim Hall Museum
• LaMontagne's Fake Chair
• "Furniture of the Pilgrim Century" by Wallace Nutting (Marshall Jones: Boston, 1921) pg 182-184 (google book search)