Side Chair c. 1937

Louis Annino made this watercolor and graphite drawing of a Side Chair. The chair is a social object. It speaks to the lives of people who would have used it in the past, and how those people understood their place in the world. The image shows a chair in profile. We can tell from its design that it belongs to the Queen Anne style, named after the British monarch reigning in the early 1700s, although Annino drew this much later. This style marked a shift away from the heavy and formal designs of previous eras, featuring instead curved lines, lighter forms, and an overall sense of elegance and comfort. We can see an interest in the social role of the object. Such documentation was undertaken by the Index of American Design, a New Deal project that hired artists to record examples of furniture, costumes, and other decorative arts. By studying the material culture of the past, we can learn about the values, beliefs, and lifestyles of the people who created and used these objects.