This piece i think demonstrates my argument about what took place at the start of the 20th century in america. For half a century prior, victorian furniture of various styles in walnut dominated the american scene, it was affordable, plentiful and built on an enormous scale for a large and growing middle class. In 1900, all that changed, first off, walnut was getting expensive due to over cutting and 2, the style changed dramatically to the craftsman/mission style with quarter sawn oak as the primary wood. If you were a small manufacturer and could not afford to buy all new machines all at once to accommodate this new style era, what could you do?
If this chair is all quarter sawn oak (hard to tell with pics), that crest rail gives it away, it is clearly a late eastlake shallow relief carving with the rest of the chair in a somewhat awkward attempt at the new mission style. This guy took his existing machines that built victorian and did the best he could with what he had to work with. It happened a lot.
