Macculloch Hall Historical Museum

After reading about the history of Campeche chairs and the conservation process, write a museum label to put next to George Macculloch's Campeche chair. Museum labels are generally a few sentences that share information and invite viewers to make connections with the object. More information about great museum labels in linked below. What information do you include in your label? What is the theme of the label? What key points would you want a visitor to the museum to take away after reading your label?

Student Engagement: Make your Own Museum Label for George Macculloch's Campeche Chair

George Macculloch, c.1850, Oil on canvas, 2007.13

The Macculloch Family

How can you see George Macculloch's Campeche Chair today? What stories can be told using the chair? Click through the slideshow below to see the chair in the museum. 

Interpreting George Macculloch's Campeche Chair in Museum

The Campeche chair was left in the attic after the family sold the house in 1949 and was removed in 2020 by professional art handlers to be conserved. It was likely left in the attic because its legs and reclining back made it nearly impossible to get down the narrow stairs from the attic. MHHM hired a professional upholsterer to do the work of conserving the chair. Michael Mascelli, professional upholsterer, started the work by detailing the condition of the chair in a Conservation Report.  Click on the circles to learn more about the state the chair was in prior to conservation as detailed in the Conservation Report.

Pre-Conservation of George Macculloch's Campeche Chair

Read each slide from the slideshow below to learn more about how a Campeche chair made its way from Mexico to the attic at Macculloch Hall in Morristown, NJ.

The History of the Campeche Chair

Macculloch Hall Historical Museum John Adler Thomas Nast Research Library

Student Engagement: Digging Deeper

The goal for conserving the Campeche chair was to maintain as much of the chair as possible while also returning the object to a recognizable chair. The full conservation treatment is fully reversible if future museum curators wished to interpret the chair as it was originally found. Click on each of the colored dots to learn more about how each part of the chair was conserved as detailed in Michael Mascelli's Conservation Report. 

Conservation of George Macculloch's Campeche Chair

When is a chair more than a chair? What ideas, values, and attitudes can modern audiences learn from a chair? Through one object in the Macculloch Hall Historical Museum collection, a Campeche chair belonging to George Macculloch, this Resource Kit answers those questions. Using the chair a primary source students will gain an understanding of how museums use objects to tell stories about the past.

Macculloch Hall Historical Museum Website

Museums & Material Culture: George Macculloch's Campeche Chair

Geography

Social Studies

U.S. History

Careers

Careers in Museums

The Campeche chair is notable for its distinct form. The wood frame has a fixed curvilinear curule base and a leather or sometimes cane reclining sling seat. 

Named after the Bay of Campeche, a Mexican port city along the Gulf of Mexico where these chairs were exported, this style of chair, a Spanish Colonial form, made it's way from Mexico to New Orleans via trade routes in the early 1800s.  

Prior to being called Campeche chairs they were called 

the Spanish word for armchair, or the French interpretation of the Spanish 

. Cargo manifestos from the early 1800s list 

 chairs, arm chairs, or Spanish chairs coming from coastal Mexican towns such as Campeche, Sisal, Tabasco, and Veracruz into New Orleans.

Image Credit: Campeche chair, Mexico (probably Yucatán) or Spain, c. 1820. Mahogany and mahogany veneer with light and dark wood inlay and original Mexican or Spanish embossed leather; Metropolitan Museum of Art, gift of Mr. and Mrs. Douglas Williams.

From the late 18th- to the mid-19th centuries, the Campeche chair was considered a status symbol by southern plantation owners and northern gentleman farmers thanks, in part, to Thomas Jefferson. A gentleman farmer manages a farm, but does not work on it. He received a Campeche chair from Thomas Bolling Robertson. In 1807, Jefferson appointed Robertson as the secretary of the Territory of Louisiana. Robertson held that position until Louisiana was admitted as a state in 1812, then served as the first member the state's first member of the House of Representatives, and then as Louisiana governor in 1820. 

Jefferson was said to have been so delighted by the Campeche chair that he had more of them made in his woodshop at Monticello. It is believed that James Madison's Campeche chair was in a gift from Jefferson. 

Image Credit: Rembrandt Peale, Thomas Jefferson, 1800; Oil painting; White House Collection/White House Historical Association 

In 1850, Dolley Madison's niece, Mary Cutts, wrote in her memoir about her uncle's Campeche chair: 

"Statuary beautifully chiseled occupied the mantel, Mr. Madison’s favorite seat was a campeachy chair."

Photo Credit: Campeche chair, United States or Mexico, c. 1810-1825. Mahogany with original Mexican or Spanish embossed leather; James Madison Museum, Orange, Virginia

In 1836, James Colles, a wealthy New Orleans businessman, moved to Morristown to an estate next to the Maccullochs. Colles brought his Campeche chair, now in the American Wing at the Metropolitan Museum of Art with him to Morristown. This photo shows Colles in white pants on his porch standing next to his chair .

Given the close proximity of the Colles Estates and the families' friendship, George Macculloch likely knew of Colles's chair. 

Today, the Colles Mansion, now a private club, sits one block behind Macculloch Hall as the building was moved in 1885. 

Image Credit: The Colles Family, ca. 1875 (reproduced from Emily de Forest, James Colles [1788- 883]: Life and Letters[New York, 1926]

When Macculloch Hall was sold by the family in 1949, a Campeche chair remained in the attic. 

In Mary Louisa Macculloch Miller's (George Macculloch's daughter) will in 1888, "grandfather's leather chair" was itemized. 

Though we do not know whether the Campeche chair came to Macculloch Hall by gift or purchase, its relative scarcity in the first half of the 19th century, particularly in the Mid-Atlantic states, makes it likely that the Maccullochs knew about the chair's associations with Southern plantation culture and its exoticism. 

Given that in his reading, publishing on agriculture, and journal keeping, George Macculloch modeled himself after Jefferson, it is possible that he knew of Jefferson's affinity for the Campeche chair. 

In the photograph, Mary Louisa Macculloch Miller is the older woman seated at the center in a white bonnet. This photography was taken at her 74th birthday party. Her children and grandchildren are gathered around her.

Image Credit: Mary Louisa Macculloch Miller and family, May 1878, Macculloch Hall Historical Museum Collection

Resource Kits

Object Library

Museums

Museums & Material Culture: George Macculloch's Campeche Chair

The History of the Campeche Chair

Background Knowledge

The Origins of Campeche Chairs