Featured Lion(?) Face Chair Help?

Hello!

This is my first time posting, I'm hoping that maybe you smart folks will be able to help me better understand this chair I've inherited from my grandparents.

It was left in the home my great-grandparents bought in the 1930s/1940s by the previous owners. They lived around Waupun, Wisconsin.

The design appears to be pressed, it has red glass eyes. The seat seems to be put together with a biscuit/plate joint, but the arms and some of the leg spindles are joined with screws. No markings or papers of any kind.

Don't read too much into the seat, I just caned that (my Grandma says it was caned when she got it from her in-laws, but the seat was failing so she had taken it off and created a cushion for it).

Any ideas or information you can share with me at all are super appreciated! I keep looking at different pictures online and can't find anything quite like it - so even just knowing what terms to search for the style of arms/legs/back would be great.

Thanks!

 

Nice job on that caning. It's not cheap to do, either. If I saw it here in the UK, I'd think late nineteenth.

 

Hi @EmilieRCincy

You've got a nice pressed back refinished oak rocker ca. 1900-1910. I like the lion with red eyes pressed into the top rail. Sadly, rockers have taken a big hit during the brown furniture recession of the past several decades, and this one would probably go for less than $100 at any U.S. auction. Without a label of any sort it will be virtually impossible to say who made this, although with a Wisconsin location it may well have been made in neighboring Michigan, the capital of U.S. furniture manufacturing back then.

Fortunately, this rocker has been well taken care of, and will probably last you (and your descendants) another 100 years.

 

Welcome, Emilie. Great job, and I love the lion, that makes it so unusual.

 

It is in wonderful condition, isn't it?

Debora

 

Agree with Ghopper ..... other than it is not a rocker

 

Thank you Ghopper1924! I originally thought that time frame as well, are you basing that off of the design/press of the top? My Grandpa thought it might've been a little earlier given the people who had lived in the house before him and the look of the screws. It's all very interesting! I'm actually kind of glad it's not worth much, I don't have to worry about my cousins wishing they'd been gifted it!

 

Thank you! I actually was just staring at the feet wondering if their used to be rockers that I hadn't realized were missing, haha!!

 

I'm pretty impressed with how well it was kept from that old WI farmhouse down to Cincinnati present day

 

Thank you!!

Thanks so much! It was a lot of fun to do in the evenings! My mom has a rocker she'd like me to do next.

 

I thought it was just me being off my rocker.

 

This brought back a memory ... My mother re-caned some chairs when I was a child. It was a lot of work, and she did enjoy it!

 

NICE, NICE well kept chair!!! Hope you enjoy and keep it!!!! Family heirlooms are most always WONDERFUL to have!!!

 

D'oh! For decades I had a family rocker that looked very much like this chair, especially the arms. So........

Like AJ alluded to, I must be off MY rocker!