A Halloween Chair. Perfect For The Front Porch Saturday Night

ACNews:Written by Terry Kovel
Monday, 26 October 2009 07:11
A rocking chair shaped like a skeleton is bound to be noticed, especially around Halloween. This 20th-century example brought $3,198 at Jackson's Auctioneers in Cedar Falls, Iowa, this past June.
Skeletons are invited guests at our celebration of Halloween, the Mexican holiday called "Day of the Dead" and a few other ghoulish events. A chair shaped like a skeleton, with boney arms, ribs, feet and skull, is one of the largest skeleton pieces a collector can find, and it's a mystifying piece of antique furniture. The late Vincent Price, a well-known actor in horror films, owned a whole set of skeleton chairs. At least four variations of the large, scary chairs have been sold in recent years. A few were painted white, one was dark mahogany and one was a rocking chair. The most famous is a Russian chair that has an inscription that solved part of the mystery of why these chairs were made. The inscription indicated the chair was a gift from "Masonic Lodge, 1838," so at least one of the chairs related to a Masonic ritual. That chair sold in London in 1980 for $36,300, sold again in 1992 for about half that, then sold in 2009 for $3,198 at Jackson's Auctions in Cedar Falls, Iowa. A popular modern "skeleton chair" is an aluminum chair by Michael Aram. It has a ribcage back, no arms or skull, a pelvis seat and three legs that look like bones. Price: $450. If you want your own skeleton chair to frighten guests on Halloween, you can buy an inexpensive chair slipcover that's printed with a skeleton to cover the back, arms, seat and legs with appropriate bones