Incollect Magazine - Issue 6

by Christopher Storb Fig. 1: High-back Windsor armchair, Philadelphia, Penn., 1765–1775. Yellow poplar, maple, hickory, mahogany. H. 43¾, W. 32¼, D. 26 in. Monumental in size, this chair may have functioned in a ceremonial role. In addition to the medial stretcher, the side stretchers also have collared rings to reduce their visual length. Photo by author. 92 www.incollect.com American Windsors In the Dietrich American Foundation O ver his lifetime, H. Richard Dietrich Jr (1938–2007) assembled an extensive and diverse collection of American art and artifacts. Dietrich began to collect in earnest after he established a nonprofit institution—The Dietrich American Foundation—in 1963. Books and manuscripts were his first focus, but his collecting expanded to include American furniture, Pennsylvania German fraktur, silver, Chinese export porcelain, whale-trade objects, and paintings. In 1966, Dietrich purchased Arkadia, in Chester Springs, Pennsylvania, an early eighteenth- century stone house with later additions, which would be his primary residence for the rest of his life. That year, Dietrich purchased his first examples of American Windsor seating furniture—a Philadelphia high-back armchair (Fig. 1), a Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, low- back settee (Fig. 2), and a New York continuous-bow child’s armchair (Fig. 3). Through the following twenty-two years, Dietrich created a small but carefully chosen and notable grouping of American Windsor furniture, creating a significant subset of objects in the Foundation’s American