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Sometimes such a chair has been treasured in a family for over a hundred years and through use has come to need attention. More often, a genuine Hitchcock has been recognized at an auction or in someone's attic or garage.

Lambert Hitchcock made these chairs in his factory in Riverton, Connecticut, from 1826 to 1840. They are among the most famous pieces of furniture in American history, and Hitchcock was known as America's greatest chairmaker in the 1830's.

About 200,000 of these sound and handsome chairs were produced by Hitchcock. These chairs were made to be decorated. Most of them had rush seats and were made in twenty parts. Several basic designs were used. The most typical chairs were straight chairs of the size we use around our dining room tables today. They sometimes had arms.

The earliest and finest Hitchcocks were made and decorated by master craftsmen who signed their work. Some of these chairs were grained to look like some other wood than that of which they were actually made. For instance a chair of maple might be grained to resemble rosewood or mahogany.

After this graining, which was done with remarkable skill, designs were applied free-hand in gold leaf, or more frequently with stencil in gold or bronze powders. Stencils were done on a black ground. The finest and earliest chairs of this type were done in multiple stencil, which gave depth to the design and is one of the surest indications of a "good chair."

After Lambert Hitchcock's death, cheap imitations of his chairs were made both in his factory and in other parts of the country.

TO RESTORE the design on a fine original Hitchcock is one of Mrs. Sage's delights. She charges from $8 to $15 per chair. Not all the chairs that come to her are original, nor are all Hitchcocks. But she accepts all chairs which require this type of decoration.

New customers learn about Mrs. Sage's work from old customers and from friends. Her work is very well known in Charlottesville and Albemarle County. Mrs. Sage teaches music in a school, plays the organ in a church and another of her hobbies, that of painting and stencilling trays and canisters, calls her work to the attention of a larger number of people. Late afternoons and evenings are her hobby hours and she has all the work she can do.

Before undertaking to restore the design on a chair, Mrs. Sage requires it to be in good condition, with its rush seat restored. Often the designs have been covered by several layers of paint. Not realizing the value of their Hitchcock, owners would often "freshen up" the whole chair with paint.

With many chairs, Mrs. Sage has to hunt for the design under several layers of paint.

"With a penknife," she explains, "I scrape part of the back panel to see what was originally there. Next, if a design exists, I go over the whole chair with a solvent, made up of equal parts of turpentine, acetone and alcohol to remove the paint and dirt of years and to bring out as much of the design as possible. I keep a pan of water close by to arrest too great chemical action."

Usually the original pattern is easily distinguished. But occasionally only the faintest trace of it remains; then like an archaeologist with fragments of a monument, Mrs. Sage must determine what the pattern most likely was.

She has made a study of these old designs over many years. She never misses a chance of studying an old Hitchcock and often copies the pattern. Of the books on design of that period Mrs. Sage particularly likes "Early American Decoration," by Esther Stevens Blazer.

NOT ONLY are certain designs, such as cornucopia with fruit, very characteristic of the period, but the "striping" of the chair is also characteristic. Striping is the fine hair-like lines which follow the chair's contours.

These were usually done in dull yellow paint instead of the gold or bronze, probably because the yellow paint was less expensive. Also the panels of the chairs were sometimes outlined with wide bands of gold or bronze and the legs and posts were also done in the same manner.

Sometimes gold-leaf designs were applied free hand to those chairs which were grained to resemble particular woods but the most typical Hitchcocks were black panelled chairs done in multiple stencil. In her restorations, Mrs. Sage always uses the same method used by the early decorators.

When doing a multiple stencil, she first makes a tracing of the whole design, using a tracing paper called "Super See," which comes in graded thicknesses. If some of the design is missing on the back of the chair, Mrs. Sage must fill it in.

"Then," she explains, "I work out the design on a practice sheet which I make as much like the back of the chair as I can, in size, shape, color, etc. For a black panelled chair, I make a black background, using Hazenkote paper, or any heavy paper with several coats of flat black paint on it. This is cut to correspond exactly to the panels of the chair."

MRS. SAGE uses architect's linen to make the stencils. She achieves a feeling of depth in the design by making many stencils for it so that some parts can be high-lighted and other parts done in softer, duller tones. She calls each separate stencil that she makes a unit of the whole.

For instance, a peach might have two units made for it, one cut for the highlighted front and another for the far side, where gold or bronze powder will be applied in a softer tone. She often cuts ten to fifteen units for the design on the back of one chair.

For some designs genuine gold leaf is used. This comes in booklets with the sheets of gold leaf separated from one another by sheets of paper. Before gold leaf is applied, the design must be blocked in on the chair with gold leaf sizing, to which some color has been added. Mrs. Sage usually adds yellow but other people who do this work sometimes use black paint in the sizing.

When this sizing is nearly dry, but still tacky, the gold leaf is applied free hand. The rest of the design is usually stencilled in with bronze or gold powder. The term "bronze" is the name used commercially for all of these powders used for stencil designs. The light, bright shades are made of gold. Green shades, copper shades are made of bronze. The powders also come in silver, aluminum and mixtures of metals. They are sold at stores specializing in artist's supplies and at some paint shops. They come in plastic bottles or in packaged form.

A TYPICAL design for these elegant old chairs is a cornucopia full of fruit. For the sake of contrast, the horn will be of gold leaf and the fruit will be stencilled with various shades of bronze and gold. The striping will be in either gold leaf, or bronze paint or even yellow paint which is exceedingly typical.

"After I am satisfied with the way the design looks on the black practice sheet, I make the chair ready to have the design applied to it by giving it a coat of varnish," Mrs. Sage explains. "When this is half dry, I apply the design. The varnish must be tacky enough to make the bronze powder adhere, yet dry enough to let the stencil come away clean."

"Velvet fingers" or "chamois bobs" are used to apply the bronze powder or the gold leaf. Chamois bobs are made by tying small pieces of chamois over little balls of cotton. Velvet fingers are really nothing but little pieces of silk velvet which have been carefully hemmed so there will be no edges to fray and come off on the design. Cotton velvet will not work. It must be silk velvet.

The stencils are arranged on a thick piece of cardboard in the order they are to be used. They are hung on the cardboard with ordinary straight pins. Near at hand is a palette of bronze and gold powders.

When the design on the back of the chair is finished, Mrs. Sage stencils the decorations on the posts and the legs of the chair. Sometimes this design is simple striping, sometimes it is more elaborate.

When the chair is thoroughly dry, Mrs. Sage applies the first of three coats of varnish. The second coat may be "antiqued" with a tiny bit of burnt umber to give an aged effect. The final coat is of satin varnish. It is essential that each coat should dry very thoroughly before the next one is put on. Mrs. Sage always allows twenty-four hours or more. The chair is rubbed with fine steel wool after each coat of varnish and waxed after the final coat.

If Lambert Hitchcock could come back to life, I doubt whether he himself could tell the difference between a chair that Mrs. Sage has restored and one done by his best decorator.

HITCHCOCK CHAIRS are still made in the original factory by John Kenney, who came upon the old factory in 1946, while he was fishing in the Farmington River. The old factory had been abandoned since 1930. All Mr. Kenney knew about Hitchcock chairs was that his family owned one which it cherished.

John Kenney decided to re-open the old factory and to produce chairs as much like the originals as he could. He found a partner in Richard Coombs, who knew woods and cabinet making. Like the original maker's the modern Hitchcock has twenty parts. It is made of Connecticut rock maple and its rush seat is made from cattails gathered in the same swamp area where Lambert Hitchcock cut his.