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The “Rising Sun” Chair.

The “Rising Sun” Chair. NPS Photo.

In 1779, Philadelphia furniture maker John Folwell provided the Pennsylvania Assembly with a new chair for the legislature’s Speaker. Today, we call this the “Rising Sun” Chair after Franklin’s famous 1787 observation that the gilded half sun on the chair’s top was analogous to the new nation under the Constitution in that both were “rising” to greatness. The Rising Sun Chair replaced an earlier one presumably destroyed by the British Army when they occupied Philadelphia during the fall of 1777 and the spring of 1778. That earlier chair was the one that John Hancock sat in during the Declaration of Independence’s creation in the summer of 1776.

During the 19th and early 20th centuries, people frequently confused Hancock’s chair with the Rising Sun Chair and assumed that the two were one and the same. It wasn’t until furniture scholar William Macpherson Hornor, Jr. published his Blue Book, Philadelphia Furniture in 1935 that Folwell’s 1779 creation of the Rising Sun Chair was widely publicized. Even after Hornor’s clarification, the name “Hancock’s Chair” clung to the Rising Sun Chair. Franklin’s 1787 observation about the chair as Washington’s seat during the Constitutional Convention was well known, but it didn’t contribute to naming the chair until the latter part of the 20th century. Perhaps the National Park Service invented the name “Rising Sun” Chair in an attempt to get people to stop calling it “Hancock’s” Chair? The Rising Sun Chair remained in the custody of the Pennsylvania State Legislature until 1872 when Frank Etting, the chairman of Philadelphia’s Centennial committee, and two former state governors negotiated the chair’s return to Independence Hall. Since then, the chair has been a focal point of many exhibits in the Hall’s Assembly Room.

Over the years, the Rising Sun Chair has undergone many changes. For example, in 1838, Philadelphia antiquarian John Fanning Watson saw the chair in Harrisburg and sketched it showing that the chair had casters for feet, rather than the flat caps that we see today. In addition, the chair’s wooden frame shows many nail holes (although no traces of the original upholstery material remain) indicating that the chair has been upholstered many times since it was new. During the National Park Service’s early stewardship of the chair, it received new upholstery as part of a larger furniture restoration project. Recently, the appearance of that modern upholstery was questioned by INDE curators who asked the Friends of Independence to fund a chair study and reupholstery project. In 2008, the Friends received $9000 from Tourism Cares, a national philanthropic group. These funds paid for the Rising Sun Chair’s reupholstery, a 3-month project completed just in time for this year’s July 4th celebration.

The new upholstery addresses three main questions about the chair’s historic appearance: (1) what kind of material would be used on such an important chair that also saw such hard use? (2) how would the chair’s upholstery have been ornamented, if at all? and (3) how would 18th-century upholstery methods have made the chair’s original cushioning look? Karie Diethorn and Bob Giannini discussed these questions with the Philadelphia Museum of Art’s lead furniture conservator, David deMuzio, and his associates.  The PMA conservation staff is intimately familiar with 18th-century Philadelphia furniture of the highest caliber as their institution contains some of the most important examples of the city’s 18th-century cabinetmaker’s trade. The study group concluded that cow hide tanned dark brown would have been considered in 1779 to be both attractive and durable. Ornamental brass tacks, sized to match those on surviving chairs of the same time period, were used to outline the bottom edges of the chair’s seat and arms. The tacks were not added to the top edges of the chair’s seat because that style or ornamentation wasn’t popular in Philadelphia around the time of the Revolution when the Rising Sun Chair was made.  Finally, the newly upholstered seat has a much loftier profile now than previously as the former is closer to what chairs of this era usually had. The PMA conservators further tweaked the chair’s new upholstery by artificially stressing the leather to simulate wear. This artificial patina lends great character to the new upholstery and suggests the heavy use the chair would have gotten during the first 60 years of its highly visible life.

One final aspect to the Rising Sun Chair’s new upholstery reminds us that this isn’t just any chair. All of the recent upholstery work was done with one very important goal in mind– the preservation of the chair’s original, historic wood. To do that, the PMA conservators attached nothing to the chair’s frame.  Instead, all of the upholstery is built upon a lightweight platform that sits on top of the chair’s frame. This platform also provides a base for the upholstery that covers the front of the chair seat edges; the ornamental brass tacks are just heads glued onto the upholstery. This conservation upholstery method means that even George Washington couldn’t sit on the Rising Sun Chair today– the chair seat can no longer support anyone’s weight!

Cultural Resources Management in the National Park Service

The National Park Service is the steward of many of America’s most important cultural resources. These resources are categorized as archeological studies, cultural landscapes, ethnographic resources, historic and prehistoric structures, and museum collections. The Service’s cultural resource management program involves:

• Research to identify, evaluate, document, register and establish basic information about cultural resources and traditionally associated peoples.
• Planning to ensure that management processes for making decisions and setting priorities integrate information about cultural resources and provide consultation and collaboration with outside entities; and
• Stewardship to ensure that cultural resources are protected, receive treatments to achieve desired conditions, and are made available for public understanding and enjoyment.

The cultural resources at Independence National Historical Park include icons such as the Liberty Bell and Independence Hall, a large archeological collection, fine and decorative arts and special places and spaces such as Independence and Washington Square and the uninterrupted areas between the Liberty Bell, our public dissent area and Independence Hall. We approach cultural resources management in an interdisciplinary manner to ensure that all resources receive proper professional attention. Many of the methods of inventory, collection, analysis and preservation of cultural resources in common use today were developed at Independence.

Welcome to the INDE Collections blog!

Welcome to the INDE Collections blog. Independence National Historical Park’s collections contain approximately 2.2 million historic artifacts associated with the events, people, places, and ideas relevant to the park’s preservation and interpretive mission. These artifacts include books, manuscripts and documents, personal items, militariana, architectural fragments, fine and decorative arts, park-related memorabilia, and archeological material excavated from sites within the park’s boundaries. These artifacts range in date from the 17^th through the 21^stcenturies. Among the artifacts are such diverse items as the Liberty Bell, the furnishings used by Congress during its Philadelphia tenure, and life portraits of many prominent participants in the Revolutionary and Federal era. The archeological artifacts are predominantly Euro-American, but some African and Native American materials are represented in the collection. The park’s collection provides a broad picture of everyday life in that era, particularly for those Philadelphians who may otherwise have left little of no record of how they lived. The collection contains special focus areas:

· Objects from Independence Square Buildings—these objects are directly related to the events, people, and buildings associated with the Continental Congress, Constitutional Convention, and branches of federal government (legislative, judicial, executive) during the 1790s. Also included are materials relevant to the ongoing significance of Independence Hall as an international symbol of popularly determined government.

· Historical portraits—begun in the early 1780s, Charles Willson Peale’s Philadelphia Museum contained a wide range of objects including portraits of the artist’s contemporaries. In 1854, the City of Philadelphia bought many of Peale’s Museum portraits as the cornerstone of a museum of the Revolution in Independence Hall. This collection increased during the Centennial era with the City’s purchase of many pastel portraits by members of the Sharples family who traveled in America during the mid 1790s and first decade of the 19^th century. Since 1950, the National Park Service has added other portraits contemporary with those collected by the City of Philadelphia to form a unique view of the prominent actors in the events that founded the American republic. 

· Declaration of Independence and U.S. Constitution—the evolution of these founding documents is represented by associated manuscripts and printed materials relevant to both the ideology upon which these documents are based and how this ideology was shaped into a uniquely American vision of democratic government. Different versions and forms of each document from the 18^th through the 21^st centuries represent the history of their development as agents of change.

 · Decorative Arts and Americana—the park’s restored historic structures contain furnished installations as a means of providing context for the historic era (1750 to 1840) upon which the park’s mission focuses. Some of these furnishings are original to the structures in which they are exhibited; others are contemporary with the era to which the buildings are restored. The furnishings reflect both mainstream (i.e. Anglo European) and associated (e.g. Atlantic, Native American) cultures of 18^th– and early-19^th century America, particularly as they were represented in Philadelphia. Economic, social, religious, and political life in its various forms is communicated through the collections.

 · Architectural Salvage—this collection contains building components documented to Delaware Valley (especially Philadelphia) structures erected between 1730 and 1850. The collection represents the technical and social aspects of architecture in the era of the park’s focus as a means of exploring aesthetics, taste, class, and innovation among a variety of societal groups.

 · Books and Documents—this collection provides context to 18^th-century American events in the form of ideas and their dissemination. Subjects range through Anglo European politics, religion, economics, natural history, philosophy, medicine, technology, history, and the arts. Particular emphasis is paid to popular forms of publishing (e.g. broadsides, cartoons, newspapers). Legal texts are also well represented in the collection as they are relevant to the Assembly Library in Independence Hall, the Bishop White House and the Todd House libraries.

 · Independence Square Ephemera—objects produced by commemorative events held within the Independence Square buildings from the 18^th century through the present represent the ongoing cultural relevance of these structures.

 · Liberty Bell—these include relics of the Bell itself and ephemera related to the Bell’s evolving historical meaning. Included are objects of consumerism (e.g. advertisements), humor (cartoons), and commemoration (souvenirs).

 · Photographs and Prints—this collection represents the pictorial history of Philadelphia and particularly the areas now within the park. Various formats (e.g. stereographs, postcards) and subjects document the changing appearance of the park’s structures and landscapes.

 · Benjamin Franklin-Related Materials—these objects, owned or created by Franklin, illustrate his many interests and achievements (civic, provincial, national, and international, political, cultural and scientific).