Posted 5 years ago
oldekanuck
(1 item)
I recently acquired a set of 6 chicken coup Windsor chairs, one of which still has the label "Charles Marsh, Windsor Chair Maker, #75 John street, New York". For some reason I am having a really tough time finding any information on this man and his business. Based on brief references he appears to have been active from about 1780 to 1810 or so. Does anyone have any information on Charles Marsh and his Windsor Chair business ?
A bit from the web on Marsh getting rights to build the Windsor chair.
on July 25, 1810, Gragg sold partial rights to his patent chairs for $500 to the New York chairmakers Charles Marsh and Joseph Riley.
AMAZING Chairs-- you were lucky that one retained a label.
Nothing patented in these chairs or any standard windsor.
Gragg had a patented curvilinear "Elastic Chair":
https://www.colonialsociety.org/publications/3297/samuel-gragg-and-elastic-chair
This is probably the partial rights obtained by Marsh.
The "elastic chair" is something that I wasn't familiar with. Would love to acquire an example.
scott
Thanks fhrjr2 for your patent nugget-- started me into the rabbit hole that yielded the elastic chair!
scott
Thanks fhrjr2, I did find that link, it was a partial patent for the elastic chair, apparently there is no record of Marsh ever producing the "elastic chair". This link surprised me because it suggested that Charles Marsh was one of the larger New York Windsor chair makers but while I could find lots of information on Gragg's "elastic chair", I could only find a similar link or two regarding Charles Marsh. Thanks !
I didn't bookmark the link I was on but Gragg was also producing Windsor chairs. The article was a mile long and took time to find reference to Marsh. The article was actually written about the elastic chair and Gragg not being much of a craftsman early on when he started.