To facilitate the description of its construction, a sketch is supplied in Figure 1, giving cur- rent terminology. Both the leonine legs and the “coasters” on which they are mounted are made of a single piece of a species of salt cedar (tamerisk),2 a native wood which is also used throughout the basic structure of the chair. In the absence of stretchers, the legs are braced by the structure of the side rails, as shown in Figure 2, while reinforcement at the front and back is supplied by a pair of knee braces that join, half-lapped, at the center ( ). These are attached to the legs by mortise and tenon, and are glued and pegged to the underside of the crossrails. The shorter cross rails are mortised into the longer side ones, and the space that they frame was originally filled with a webbing of linen cord3 drawn through a total of 68 holes, sixteen on each side and one in each corner. A sufficient amount re- mained, in the front left corner, so that the seat could be restored to its original appear- ance.4 A total of thirty cords was passed through each of the holes; these subdivide into two groups of fifteen, which are in turn composed of three groups of five. Five cords thus make
1 MMA 68.58, purchased with funds donated by Ed- mundo and Patricia Lassalle. The height is 86.2 cm, the width 49.3 cm. Initially illustrated and briefly described in
BMMA 27 (1968), 90, it has subsequently appeared in sev- eral other publications: Metropolitan Museum of Art, No- table Acquisitions 1965–1975 (New York 1975), p. 76: Nora E. Scott in BMMA 31 (1973), 142, fig. 15; H.G. Fischer,
L’écriture et l’art, pls. 86–88. Some of the points made in the present article are summarized in the final chapter of that work, and especially pp. 189–96.
2 Analysis by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Products Laboratory. For this and other data I have drawn on notes compiled in 1968 by Miss Kate C. Lefferts, who
was then in charge of the Metropolitan Museum’s Conser- vation Department.
3 Linum usitatissimum; analysis by Malcolm Delacorte. 4 The design has been established by Miss Nobuko Kajatoni, and the reweaving executed by Charles Anello. Miss Kajatoni has analyzed the yarn makeup as follows: the yarns are two single spun “S,” plied again into “S” and four plied yarns replied into “S,” thus:
≥ \ \ \ ≥ \ \ \ ≥ \ \ \ ≥ \ \ \ 1 . CO N S T R U C T I O N A N D M A T E R I A L S
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up one unit of the weave, and the three groups of five were woven into each hole twice, from opposite sides of the chair diagonally, to create the plain weave. The pattern is shown in Figure 3.
As in the case of all animal-legged chairs, the back is mounted separately upon the frame of the seat. The backrest, curved laterally and inclined rearward, is supported by two per- pendicular stiles and a center brace between them; both the backrest and its supports are mortised into the rails of the seat frame below them, and into the headrail above. A hori- zontal board (backrail) is mortised into the crestrails at a distance of about 5 cm below the headrail and a lower one about the same distance above the rear crossrail; a series of seven vertical slats are mortised between these, each isolated by a space of a little less than 4 cm. All the mortise-and-tenon joints are glued with a black adhesive, to be described presently, and secured with blackwood pegs that run completely through the thickness of the wood.
Fig. 1. Structure of New Kingdom chairs
1. Headrail 3. Backrail 6. Brace (angle brace) 9. Knee brace
2. Stile (stay) 4. Splat 7. Crossrail 10. Emplacement of stretchers
2´. Center brace 5. Crestrail 8. Side rail (from mid-Dyn. XVIII onward)
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Fig. 2. Chair of Rn.¡-snb, side view ES 13 FINAL Page 143 Sunday, February 25, 2001 8:45 AM
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East African blackwood (Dalbergia melanoxylon)5 has been used to cover the front, upper surfaces and sides of the chair with a veneer that varies from 1.5 to 2.5 cm, being thicker on the seat and back than on the legs. All of this is glued and pegged, the pegs varying from 0.02 to 0.04 cm. It shows evidence of a thin oil resin finish that appears to be of considerable age, since it is slightly raised where the pores of the wood have shrunk. In most cases the blackwood is applied to flat surfaces in single pieces, covering the entire area, the chief exception being, apart from the legs, the lateral surface of the stiles and braces. Knots in the veneer have been excised and replaced with boat-shaped insertions (“flying Dutch- men”). The blackwood veneer on the legs is necessarily more piecemeal (Fig. 2 and Pl. 29), and its lesser thickness is doubtless due to its having sustained the final stages of shaping. This is, to my knowledge, the only case where veneer has been used on the animal legs of furniture, and indeed, the only case where it has been used on three-dimensional sculpture of any kind in ancient Egypt.
No veneer was used, however, on the reverse of the backrest, on the stiles and center brace, or on the underside of the seat, and it is very probably for this reason that all of these surfaces have been damaged by rodents, while the more resistant veneered surfaces have been spared.
Ivory veneer, again applied in single pieces of about 2.5 cm thickness, is extensively used on the front of the backrest, where it alternates with blackwood on four of the seven splats, and also covers the horizontal elements to which the slats are attached. In the latter case the veneer was carved with great precision to fit the curved surface, as also in the case of the narrow strips that cover the tops of the braces in front of the crestrails. All of this makes for a beautiful balance of dark and light, and the contrast is cunningly exploited by the use of blackwood pegs on the ivory covering of the forward braces, negatively echoed by ivory pegs on the blackwood veneer of the braces behind them (Pl. 30). Another felicitous touch is the application of ivory inlay for the claws of the lion’s feet, which is known from some other chairs, but with less effect.
A further refinement is the presence of blackening in the animal glue used for the attachment of wood, to match the veneer, while an amber-colored animal glue was used to secure the elements of ivory.6
Apart from the loss of nearly all the linen webbing of the seat, the most extensive dam- age sustained by the chair affects the two stiles and center back brace, parts of which have been gnawed away (Pl. 31a). These losses have been repaired with balsa wood, attached with brass screws (Pl. 31b). The broken-off corners of the headrail have been repaired with balsa and capped with Brazilian rosewood, and a square of missing veneer on the right and left side of the front rail has likewise been restored with rosewood and doweled with rose-
5 Analysis by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Products Laboratory.
6 Analyzed, using infra-red spectroscopy, by James Howard, at the Institute of Fine Arts Conservation Center, New York University. Both adhesives are animal glue. The
black glue has more bulk than usual, containing carbon that is composed of short fibrous lengths unlike the usual carbon blacks. The presence of no other material was noted and the testing of a sample was negative for carbonate.
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wood pins set in the original holes. Finally, three small missing pieces of ivory on the left back brace have been replaced with new ivory.7