Tall Back Chair

By the end of the nineteenth century, a reaction against the often overwrought and mass-­produced furniture of the mid-century revival styles (Gothic, Rococo, Renaissance, among others) brought designs of the countervailing Arts and Crafts reform aesthetic to prominence. Among the most innovative of its American practitioners was Charles Rohlfs, whose Tall Back Chair is a masterpiece of design and execution. Carved by Rohlfs as a prototype intended for reproduction and sale but ultimately used personally in his Buffalo, New York, home, the chair’s coiling, tendril-like back and elaborately worked stretcher were inspired by the similarly organic aesthetic of architect Louis Sullivan (1856–1924), whose landmark Guaranty Building was completed in Buffalo in 1895. Sullivan’s chief interior designer for the Guaranty project was George Grant Elmslie (1871–1952), and the interwoven, web-like decorative forms Elmslie produced for that structure — at once geometric and naturalistically flowing — strongly influenced Rohlfs, who simplified and abstracted his own furniture designs, imbuing them with greater clarity and more immediate visual impact. Despite his talent as a furniture maker and critical appreciation of his work, commercial success eluded Rohlfs; his professional career was short-lived, and examples of his work are rare.