Reupholstering the Dutch Room Chairs

When Isabella Stewart Gardner opened the doors to her Museum in 1903, the gilt side chairs in the Dutch Room walls looked very different. Today, they’re covered in a floral damask (a woven patterned fabric), but originally the chairs were ombre striped satin. In photographs of the gallery taken shortly after Gardner’s death, a mix of textiles is visible on the chairs; most are still the ombre stripe, but some failing covers have been replaced with a red floral material, a brown leaf-patterned textile, and plain brown linen. In some cases, chairs have different patterns attached to the seat and the back.

 

History of the Upholstery

After Isabella’s death, her appointed “Keeper of Textiles,” Bessie Sabean, worked on these chairs. She added a velvet trim with a heraldic design (example 1 and example 2) and saved a scrap of purple silk that she found underneath the striped ombre cover. Between 1940 and 1954, all 14 chairs were reupholstered in a matching peach silk damask, and the ecclesiastical trims added by Miss Sabean were removed.

From 1964 to 1974, the chairs were reupholstered again, using material purchased in 1953, and a pink gimp trim was added to the bottom edge of the seat. Since then, the chairs have been faithfully dusted by collection management technicians. The 1970s upholstery has lasted longer than any of the previous replacements, but it, too, is fading and weakening. As part of the floor-to-ceiling restoration of the Dutch Room, we’ve commissioned new upholstery for these chairs that matches Gardner’s original vision. 
 

Choosing the Fabric

Determining which textile should go on the outside required careful examination of historic photos. Options included commissioning a floral design that matched the material currently on the chairs or recreating Miss Sabean’s reupholstery, with four different textiles, some with ecclesiastical trims and some without.

Looking at photographs taken during Gardner’s lifetime, the ombre satin remains on the chairs until it is in tatters. This choice seems at odds with Isabella’s usual high standards. She must have liked that original upholstery if she preferred the shabby-looking stripes over all-new, undamaged materials. So, curatorial and conservation staff decided to reupholster all 14 chairs in the striped satin without any trims, restoring them to how they looked when Gardner first put them in the gallery. 
 

Choosing the Color

Determining color was another challenge as the early gallery photographs are black and white. To select a color for the reproduction upholstery, we gathered as much evidence as possible. Conservation staff opened a seam to look under the current cover, hoping to find old upholstery. Oftentimes, new slipcovers may be layered over an old and worn-out textile. That would have made things easy if the original material had been hiding under a layer of silk, but we found only plain lining and padding.

Next, Collections photographer Amanda Guerra digitized the original glass-plate negative images of the Dutch Room. This allowed us to zoom in on the chairs, see how the material was pieced together, and determine the original width of the stripes. We were also able to colorize a 1926 black and white photograph using a specialized software. This type of technology is not always accurate, but in this case, the colors of the wall and tapestries on the side of the photograph were accurate, so we were optimistic the color of the chairs was correct too.

Then we turned to written sources. Registrar Kathleen King searched the Museum’s archive for references to the chairs. She found letters sent to Gardner in the 1910s, after a party in the Dutch Room. These described the color of the chairs as “faded pink,” “old red,” and “pink happenings,” among other similar terms. Certain dyes like brazilwood or early aniline dyes may lose vibrancy as they are exposed to light, and could fade from a pinkish-red to dull brown. Since the striped satin was described as a faded reddish brown when the last chair was recovered, it made sense that they were initially a shade of pink or red.

When we removed the current covers and padding to strip them down to their wooden frames, we found old nails and threads from previous upholstery campaigns. Finally, we found the red and pink yarns to confirm our hypothesis!

This matches what's described by Bessie Sabean in the 1920s, a purple silk covering that pre-dates Isabella, with a reddish material from Gardner’s day on top. Together, these different bits of evidence guided us to a confident conclusion that this would have been a red and pink striped textile. Our manufacturing partner, Prelle, wove two trials based on these colors, and we selected a rosy-pink with a crimson stripe. This fabric picks up the reds and pinks of the paintings in the room, and complements the Empire-era armchairs by the fireplace. As I spend time with the textiles Isabella selected for her museum, I see how each piece should speak to the other objects in the gallery. 

The pink damask previously on these chairs had no relation to the surrounding works of art. If you stop in the Dutch Room today and look at the chairs, you’ll see many similarities in the paintings. Red chairs and furnishings are tucked away in many paintings, just waiting for the furniture in the room to echo their colors.

A Family Connection

As for this upholstery project, one last mystery remains… and this one is personal…

In the mid-1920s, near the end of Gardner’s life, “William Keefe & Sons” reupholstered between 12 and 24 chairs in the Museum. Today, conservators, like myself, care for works of art in the collection, but in the early 20th century, restorers often worked with museums. We don’t know which exact chairs Keefe reupholstered, but this is around the time when the Dutch Room chairs were recovered.

When I found this in the records, I was excited.  Keefe is my maiden name, and my father’s family is from Boston. Do William and I share more than just a love for upholstery? Could we be related? Thus far, my searching has resulted in only dead ends. However, if you, dear reader, are a descendant of William F. Keefe, son of William and Alice Keefe of 22 Lowell St. in Cambridge, Massachusetts, during the 1920s, please reach out! I’d love to see if we are family…