THROWBACK: This Chair Is Made of America

Curious Objects

In this special throwback episode, Benjamin Miller speaks with Ellery Foutch, assistant professor of American studies at Middlebury College, about a “relic Windsor chair” assembled by Henry Sheldon (founder of the Middlebury museum named in his honor) in 1884. This unique piece of furniture was built with fragments of wood salvaged from structures with local or national significance—such as the warship Old Ironsides, the William Penn House in Philadelphia, and a colonial whipping post. (Look here for a full list of the chair’s components.) And thanks to Foutch’s and her student’s efforts, the nineteenth-century chair now has a twentieth-century twin.

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