Chair

Lockwood de Forest Jr. (1850–1932) was an American painter and designer. As a painter, he studied with Frederic Edwin Church and made many beautiful paintings of eastern and western America as well as abroad. As a designer, he cofounded the Associated Artists, a short-lived but influential Aesthetic Movement design firm, with Louis Comfort Tiffany, Candace Wheeler, and Samuel Colman.

De Forest loved India, and he spent several years living and working there in the 1880s. You can see his fascination with the East both in his paintings and in his designs like this chair. To fabricate his decorative arts designs, he started the Ahmedabad Wood Carving Company in Ahmedabad, India. There, workers called mistri, who were skilled in traditional Indian wood carving techniques, executed de Forest’s Eastern-inspired designs. It’s quite likely that this teak chair was made there. De Forest’s teak carvings were once very popular among such notables as Andrew Carnegie, and they can now be found in many museum collections.

By using Indian techniques and employing Indian workers, de Forest participated in a larger movement to revitalize traditional Indian arts during the early 20th century. These techniques had fallen into decline during British rule of India. The work of designers like de Forest and Tiffany helped keep these crafts alive.

- Alexandra Kiely

P.S. Louis Comfort Tiffany was famous for his beautiful stained glass, decorative art, and interiors, however, not many people know that he was also an accomplished painter. You can read about it here.