Atwood Exhibit Focuses On Wicker

Atwood House Exhibit Focuses On Fascinating World Of Wicker

The story of American wicker is a fascinating 19th century rags-to-riches tale of a shadowy man whose life touches upon the China Trade, the Industrial Revolution and the employment of immigrants to produce furniture we now associate with leisure and summertime.

"None of us had any idea that wicker is what it is," says Mary Ann Fritsch, co-curator of the American Antique Wicker exhibit on display at the Chatham Historical Society's Atwood House Museum through Oct. 31. "I thought it would be more blue hydrangeas and white wicker."

Wicker rocking chair with a sailboat woven into the back. COURTESY OF THE CHATHAM HISTORICAL SOCIETY

"It's art," says Thomas Tetro, a part-time resident of Harwich Port, who with his wife Kathleen owns Corner House Antiques in Sheffield in the Berkshires. The Tetros have specialized in wicker for 31 years and have loaned to the society most of the rare and unusual antique wicker now on display.

Last summer pieces from the Tetros' private collection were displayed at the Sheffield Historical Society. Selected pieces have also been shown at the Smithsonian Museum in Washington, D.C.

"Wicker is associated with leisure," Kathleen Tetro says. "It's where you're going to have conversations and relax."

"It lightened up the look from the heavy furniture that preceded it," Thomas Tetro says.

Several pieces of maritime-themed wicker such as a settee with a two-masted schooner woven into its back are here courtesy of Mary Jean McLaughlin of Ivoryton, Conn., a wicker collector and dealer.

The Tetros and McLaughlin were on hand last month for a talk on the history of American wicker manufacture. John Wall, assistant curator of the Wakefield Historical Society, wrote a monograph on the father of American wicker, Cyrus Wakefield. (In Wakefield's honor, a portion of South Reading renamed itself Wakefield in 1868.)

The word wicker refers to anything woven out of a variety of raw plant materials such as rattan, cane, reed and willow. Wakefield didn't invent wicker furniture — "King Tut went to his tomb with a wicker stool," Kathleen Tetro notes — but he cornered its manufacture.

Rattan, which grew as a weed in China, was bundled into sausages and used in the China Trade to prevent cargo on ships from shifting. When the ship was unloaded in Boston, "these large sausages of weed came out and they were dumped in the water and on the docks," Wall says.

Enter Wakefield, who grew up in a poor farmer's large family in New Hampshire. When he was about 14 his father sent him to work as a clerk in a grocery store on Boston's waterfront and, with his employer's encouragement, he began to buy and sell material he scavenged on the waterfront.

"The golden junk, so far as Cyrus Wakefield went, was rattan," Wall says.

Eventually Wakefield owned a 24-building rattan factory employing up to 1,000 Irish and Italian immigrants. By the 1850s, "anything that you could make that would look good in rattan — he would make it," Wall said. "He controlled the market in the product."

The heyday of wicker's popularity came in the Victorian era (1870s to 1900). The show is arranged chronologically, ending with Art Deco wicker, which was made for a short time in the 1920s. In between come Bar Harbor (1900-1920s) and Stick Wicker (1900s to late 1920s).

Wicker became popular after the 1876 Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia, Kathleen Tetro says. On display is a guide to that exhibition in which a 19th century visitor penned her impressions of the wicker.

In the museum's permanent galleries, antique wicker has been coordinated with appropriately-themed museum pieces. In the children's room, an ornate Victorian baby carriage stands in the middle of the floor. In the Victorian parlor are two Victorian side chairs. And in the Joseph C. Lincoln Room, "here we have Mr. Lincoln in the very same chair," Fritsch says, pointing to a photograph of Lincoln seated in a Bar Harbor-style wicker chair in green. Next to the photograph is a twin to Lincoln's chair.

Wicker pieces are whimsical as well as practical. In the main exhibition hall is a planter/aquarium/bird cage dating to the 1920s. A wicker bird stands in the wicker cage. Also in the show are several rare pieces manufactured by Samuel Colt, who was in the wicker business for 13 years. A wicker lamp is modeled after the Eiffel Tower.

Twenty-four years after Wakefield's death in 1873, his company merged with its chief competitor, becoming Heywood Bros. & Wakefield Co. That company continued production until the 1970s. These days wicker furniture is manufactured in Asia.

"American Antique Wicker" is open this month for limited hours on Tuesdays through Saturdays, 1 to 4 p.m. A grand opening celebration will be held on Saturday, June 14, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Refreshments will be served and admission will be free. Beginning on Tuesday, July 1 the gallery will be open daily with extended hours of 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. through Tuesday, Sept. 2. The show runs through Oct. 31 with limited hours and by appointment. The Atwood House Museum is located at 347 Stage Harbor Rd. For more information call the society at 508-945-2493.

6/5/08