Return to The Artistic Furniture of Charles Rohlfs
This chair is a study in loosely demarcated space. Built as a simple rectilinear frame, the chair is decorated with boldly pierced and curving boards that create dynamic sculptural silhouettes when viewed from different angles. The chair is one of four intended to fit neatly under its companion table; when all four chairs were in place, the ensemble formed a box with elaborate fretwork.
This desk chair, which Rohlfs designed in collaboration with his wife, Anna Katharine Green, is perhaps his most modernist creation, featuring a bold attenuated form and unconventional decoration. Its dramatic design creates a lithe silhouette, which is brilliantly foiled by complex pierced and carved surfaces. Subtleties such as the parabolic-shaped seat, delicate cross bracing, and complicated trapezoidal legs further distinguish this important early work.The asymmetrical organic pattern of the carved and pierced decoration of the chair's back is most unusual. Its source is the cellular structure of oak as seen under magnification. The couple had a special interest in microscopes, in part because Anna Katharine's mystery novels were among the first to incorporate crime-scene forensic evidence. The couple's admiration for the beauty of wood grain may have led them to look at oak slivers under magnification and create this imaginative chair based on the microscopic image. Rohlfs featured the family's small brass microscope in several photographs of his furniture shop, suggesting that he valued the instrument. The chair's structure and decorative motif brilliantly combines Rohlfs's skills in carving and design and Anna Katharine's interest in science, and stands as a monument to both.
One of the most novel forms Rohlfs produced, this extraordinary plant stand is pure sculpture. Composed of three identical, elaborately shaped vertical oak boards set at angles and joined at a central spine, it supports equally inventive carved finials from which the hand-hammered bucket is suspended.
The interlocking construction and pierced panels of this candelabrum combine to produce an elegant, rhythmic design. Testament to the artist's individuality, the shades are of kappa shells from the China Sea, which Rohlfs asserted were "unique in themselves and the use to which they are put."
This bench, with its deep dark finish, large ring handles, and metalwork resembling inset stones, suggests Rohlfs's interest in medieval furniture.
The sculptural tall-back chair is among Rohlfs's most complex and inspired designs. In its interlaced ovals and curvilinear stylized leaves, it demonstrates the influence of Rohlfs's idol, the architect and designer Louis Sullivan (1856–1924), and Sullivan's principal decorator, George Grant Elmslie (1869–1952). Rohlfs described their 1894 Guaranty building in Buffalo as "distinctly American" and called Sullivan a "genius" and a "giant." Just four years after the building was completed, Rohlfs created this chair. Its curving organic form has led some to link Rohlfs to the French Art Nouveau style, but the majority of commentators at the time identified him as a purely American designer; one wrote, "The wild whirls of l'art nouveau have not entrapped Mr. Rohlfs." While Rohlfs offered to make this chair in mahogany as well as in oak, and with various types of seat cushions, this example is the only one known.