A Well-Known Furniture Manufacturer

My mother owned quite a few antiques although she wasn’t really a collector. She only occasionally purchased antiques herself, but she had many objects that she had inherited from family members. When she passed away last year, I went through these items and consigned most of them to an antique store. I ended up keeping one chair, however, after my cats adopted it as their own. As it turns out, those cats have impressively good taste in antique furniture.

Hunzinger patent mark on fancy chair. After 1869. Photograph by author.

The chair in question, I have learned, is a 19th century “fancy” chair designed by George Hunzinger. Such chairs were used as accent pieces rather than being purchased as part of a suite of matching furniture (Harwood 1997). It belonged to my great-grandmother Florence Roberts Mierau, who was born in New Jersey in 1892, and most likely was originally purchased by her mother or mother-in-law. The chair’s design was patented by Hunzinger in 1869, and similar chairs were produced by his firm into the 1880s. The chair itself isn’t especially remarkable—you can see similar chairs for sale on eBay today—but it illustrates the work of a furniture designer who has not always received enough credit for his innovation and imagination.

Hunzinger fancy chair. After 1869. Photograph by author.

George Jakob Hunzinger was born in 1835 in the Kingdom of Württemberg, in the southwest corner of modern-day Germany. As a boy, he apprenticed with his father, a cabinetmaker, but as a young man, he emigrated to the United States. He settled in Brooklyn, New York, and went to work for another cabinetmaker. By 1860, at the age of 25, he had struck out on his own as a designer and manufacturer of chairs. He was one of many German immigrants working in the skilled trades in New York City during the second half of the 19th Century. These immigrants brought with them a long tradition of European craftsmanship but also a willingness to try out new ideas in the dynamic marketplace of the largest American city (Harwood 1997; Oatman-Stanford 2017).

George Hunzinger naturalization oath of allegiance. 16 Oct 1865. New York, NY.

Hunzinger seemed particularly eager to try out new ideas. Between 1860 and his death in 1898, he received 21 patents related to furniture design and function. His forte was durable, practical, and space-saving furniture, appealing to the apartment-dwellers of New York City. His first patent, in fact, was for a table with extendable leaves that folded underneath the table when not in use, rather than having to be stored separately. He also designed many different folding chairs, including some with attached writing tables (Harwood 1997; Oatman-Stanford 2017). At the Columbian Exhibition in Chicago in 1893, his firm “exhibited novel chairs bound with steel rods concealed, and tables with chairs that formed part of the table when closed” (Johnson 1898, p. 268). The chair backs made of fabric-wrapped steel wires described in this quote, which were patented by Hunzinger and appear in much of his later work, were a radical departure from the heavily upholstered appearance of much Victorian furniture.

His approach to the design and manufacture of furniture was certainly quite different from most of his contemporaries. While some Hunzinger designs seem ornate to the modern eye, they were actually very restrained by Victorian furniture standards, focusing on function over form and using geometric shapes rather than elaborate naturalistic motifs. He designed modular elements that could be used in different pieces, making his furniture faster and less expensive to produce. He also offered the same pieces in a variety of different stains and upholsteries, including gilded versions with satin upholstery aimed at upscale clients. Chair frames could also be purchased without upholstery (Harwood 1997; Oatman-Stanford 2017).

Unlike the custom work done by some acclaimed 19th century manufacturers, Hunzinger’s furniture was accessible to the rapidly growing middle class for whom the industrial revolution brought both higher incomes and more affordable products. In addition to maintaining a showroom in New York city, he sold his furniture wholesale to department stores and sales agents across the country (Harwood 1997; Oatman-Stanford 2017). The popularity of his work with a range of consumers can be seen in the many late 19th century photographs that include Hunzinger chairs. Some photography studios, in fact, seem to have purchased these chairs to be used in their studio portraits (Harwood 1997; 1999).

George Hunzinger obituary. 30 Oct 1898. The New York Tribune, p. 12.

After Hunzinger’s death, his children kept the firm open until 1925 but produced much more traditional furniture. Hunzinger’s innovative work of the 1870s and 1880s was largely forgotten, even among scholars of 19th century decorative arts. More recently, though, he has been rediscovered and celebrated as one of a handful of “protomodern” designers whose work anticipated elements of the 20th century Modernist movement (Harwood 1997; Oatman-Stanford 2017). Some of his designs are owned by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, and in 1997-98, the Brooklyn Museum of Art had a full exhibition of his work.

My chair is, in many ways, a classic early Hunzinger piece. It uses the diagonal brace he patented in 1869, about which he said:

The back legs of chairs are very liable to become loosened at the point of connection with the seat. This is particularly the case with the more expensive character of chairs, where there are not any side rails between the back and front legs. This looseness arises from pressure against the back of the chair, and from tipping the chair backward upon the hind legs. My invention is to strengthen the chair; and consists in a brace running on each side diagonally from the upper part of the chairback to the lower part of the front legs, and connected near the middle with the side of the seat or seat-frame (Hunzinger 1869).

The patent diagram below illustrates this brace, which can be found in many of his early chairs, including mine.

(left) Hunzinger, George. 1869. Improved Chair. U.S. Patent No. 88,297. Washington, DC: U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.

(right) Hunzinger fancy chair. After 1869. Photograph by author.

My chair also has the geometric design and overall simplicity that characterized Hunzinger’s early work and set him apart from many other furniture designers of the era. The chair’s upholstery, which is handwork, suggests that my family may have purchased only the chair frame, the most affordable option at the time. A similar chair frame was advertised for $18.67 in 1876, compared to $40 for a version upholstered in satin (Kimball 1876).  It is certainly a family treasure, and I’m very glad my cats wanted me to keep it!

Kimball, J. Wayland. 1876. Kimball’s Book of Designs: Furniture and Drapery. Boston, MA: J. Wayland Kimball., plate 4 and page 9.

Works Cited

Harwood, Barry R. 1997. The Furniture of George Hunzinger: Invention and Innovation in Nineteenth-Century America. Brooklyn, NY: Brooklyn Museum of Art.

Harwood, Barry R. 1999. “The Furniture of George Hunzinger: Afterthoughts on the Exhibition and Catalogue.” Studies in the Decorative Arts 6 (2): 95-106.

Hunzinger, George. 1869. Improved Chair. U.S. Patent No. 88,297. Washington, DC: U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.

Johnson, Rossiter, Ed. 1898. A History of the World's Columbian Exposition Held in Chicago in 1893, Vol III: Exhibits. New York: D. Appleton and Company.

Kimball, J. Wayland. 1876. Kimball’s Book of Designs: Furniture and Drapery. Boston, MA: J. Wayland Kimball.

Oatman-Stanford, Hunter. 2017. “Furniture of the Future: Victorian New York’s Most Visionary Designer Loved His Machines.” Collectors Weekly.