The Elusive Grove Park Inn - Roycroft Chair

Collectors of nearly every type of Arts & Crafts antiques are plagued by the same question: how many were actually made?

And in nearly every case the answer is the same: we don’t know.

Over the course of a hundred years, records were lost, destroyed by floods or fire, or simply discarded, considered unimportant by the next generation of owners or family.

Not the case with the well-known Grove Park Inn chair made by the Roycrofters.

Letters and documents confirm that in 1913 the Roycrofters shipped 400 oak dining room chairs to the Grove Park Inn in time for the July 12, 1913 opening. Almost immediately diners began to complain about the lack of arms on the model #30 chair which general manager Frederick L. Seely (son-in-law of owner Edwin Wiley Grove) had selected from the Roycroft Furniture Shop catalog.

By 1921 Fred Seely had ordered from the Roycrofters 350 pairs of oak demi-arms, which the woodworkers at the Biltmore Industries next door to the Grove Park Inn attached to the dining room chairs. The 50 unaltered chairs had been in other parts of the hotel.

Most of the 400 Roycroft chairs remained at the Grove Park Inn until 1955, when, during a major remodeling, it was decided to sell nearly all of them at a porch sale held in front of the main entrance to the aging hotel. The price for each chair: five dollars.

Employees and area residents hauled the GPI-Roycroft chairs off in their cars and trucks, leaving fewer than two dozen at the hotel. For years afterwards the rigid, leather-seated chairs could be spotted in homes, on porches, in an Eagle Street bar, languishing in antiques shops, even lining the hallway of a nursing home.

When, in 1988, collectors began making their annual pilgrimage to the Grove Park Inn Arts & Crafts Conference, the GPI-Roycroft chairs started disappearing from the Asheville scene. Local antiques dealers began stockpiling the chairs in anticipation of the annual February migration of Roycroft collectors to Asheville. Prices began to escalate as the supply, especially of examples in excellent condition, steadily declined.

In the years since the infamous 1955 porch sale, however, only four of the fifty unaltered chairs have surfaced. Those four armless arrived unsolicited at the Grove Park Inn around 1990, but each had been painted and their leather seats replaced with cloth upholstery. The Grove Park Inn purchased the four chairs and had them restored, only to have one of the chairs later stolen. The fate of the other 46 chairs remains uncertain.

The value of the GPI-Roycroft chairs is tied directly to condition, for the chairs come onto the market in various states of wear and repair. The rarest versions, in addition to those few without arms, are those chairs with an original Roycroft finish and an intact hard leather seat. Most of the once-dark chairs were refinished to make them more appealing; the leather seats grew brittle with age and often cracked under the stress of daily use.

Here, them, is a set of guidelines to help you determine the current value of a GPI-Roycroft chair:

(5) Extremely Rare – No later arms added. Original dark finish. Original black leather seat. Minimal wear. No damage or repairs. Value: $3000. (Note: no examples in this pristine condition are known to have survived.)

(4) Rare – Arms added. Original dark finish. Original black leather seat intact. Some wear, but no damage. Value: $2500-$2800.

(3) Infrequent – Arms added. Expert refinishing with dark Arts & Crafts color and finish. New leather seat or original leather seat with minor split repair. Some wear. Minor repairs made or needed. Value: $1500-$2000.

(2) Frequent – Arms added. Average refinishing with medium stain and finish. Missing or ruined leather seat. Moderate damage to arms or feet. Moderate repairs made or needed. Value: $750-$1250.

(1) Common – Arms added. Poorly refinished with excessive sanding, light color and gloss varnish. Leather seat replaced with non-Arts & Crafts upholstery. Water damage to feet or other damage to the wood. Evidence of severe weathering. Value: $400-$750.

-bj