intellectual hedonism

bonus/proof:

Closest match: Bombyx mori BmN4 cell DNA, chromosome 24, sequence Common name: Domestic Silk Moth

Do you gender trans people correctly even when they're being absolutely terrible people? Do you refuse to use the r-slur against someone who suicide baited you but is neurodivergent? Do you refuse to snark at a mentally ill person who is being genuinely unpleasant, "go take your meds!"

Do you allow members of marginalized groups to be terrible people without judging their entire demographic for it? One of the most invisible yet vital forms of privilege is the right to be terrible people as an individual rather than as a group. Do you acknowledge that there are bad people in every group, that it doesn't make their group less worth fighting for? Or do you shake your head if you happen to get mistreated by some who belong to a group and insist the entire group is awful and not worth your allyship?

I recently purchased this slat back chair from an antiques mall in Maine. My hunch is that it’s an 18th-century chair, made in New England.

It has a decaying woven splint seat and part of the top slat was broken off at some point. You can see the top slat no longer has the middle rise that the two other slats have.

But the chair is still ramrod straight and just as square as can be. Its two front stretchers (the pieces that brace the legs) have a nice amount of wear on them where many many decades of sitters rested their feet.

It’s been at least three colors in its life: first blue (and possibly even green), then red, and then black. It was probably painted black around the first half of the 19th century when Hitchcock “fancy” painted chairs came into fashion. Hitchcock chairs were commonly painted with black lacquer and stenciled with gold.

This little slat back chair would have looked very old fashioned in its red paint compared to the stylish Hitchcock chairs. But instead of discarding the slat back chair, the family that owned it updated it with black paint and gold details. The chair must have meant a lot to the family for them so make such an effort.

You can see the gold detail on the beautifully turned acorn-shaped finials.

You can even see gold detailing along the tops of the slats, which tells us that the top slat must have broken before the first half of the 19th century.

Evidence that the slat back chair was well-loved can also be seen in a repair that was made to its back stretcher. When the original back stretcher broke (did it break at the same time as the top slat?), it was replaced, but it seems the family that owned the chair did not have access to a lathe, so they carved a new stretcher by hand. You can see the ridges in the wood left by the knife, compared to the smoothly turned legs and the other stretchers.