I recently purchased this chair from Facebook Marketplace for $60. I was wondering if it may be an antique Murphy chair. It has the unique designs that look identical to a Murphy chair. No labels or stamps on it though to tell what company made it. Sorry about the poor image. It has a beautiful design on the upper back and wicker seat. I am just wondering if I got a treasure and didn't realize it!
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Murphy furniture company marks all their chairs on the bottom of the seat of the chair. Even if it has a wicker seat you should be able to find some sort of marking on the chair around the wicker. If you are not finding any thing at all, more than likely this is a copy of the same style chair that Murphy makes. You can try to speak to a furniture resale shop in your area, a person who restores furniture or even a vintage antique shop to see if they can help out a bit more on this piece. I am not sure how much furniture sells for in your area but online that is normally a good price for this chair.
All Murphy Chair Company chairs had their tag under the seat or under the arm but it is possible it has worn off.
Hopefully, another member, Pghgirl, will check this and give her opinion and information.
It may not be an original Murphy Chair Rocker:
1.) no tag
2.) cane/wicker chair bottom/seat
3.) cannot see the top of the back to compare
4.) cannot tell if it has spindles under the arms
It's possible the tag has worn off but usually not the complete tag wears off so some pieces should remain as no one would deliberately remove this tag.
I have done research on this company and I have never seen or read where they made cane bottom chairs. I could most definitely be wrong on this.
There have been a lot of small companies that made 'copycat' chairs of the most popular brand names chairs. They usually changed some feature on the chairs so they could say it was their own design. That is what I think happened with the cane bottom and maybe other things but I haven't look that closely. As I said, I could be wrong on this.
I believe it was copied after this chair:
idahoauctionbarn.hibid.com/
Interesting facts about Murphy Chair Company:
At one point they were considered the largest furniture company in the world.
They had made over 10 million chairs before 1937.
Here is an article that might help you decide if it is a Murphy chair.
You might want to post your question to one of the forums:
www.tripadvisor.com/
www.antique-shop.com/
Some sites offer free appraisals so you might want ot check some of those out.
antiques.lovetoknow.com/
I meant to add:
Looking at the picture, it appears the arms have some type of an added wood piece under the arms for support?
Did you check to see if it originally had spindles that maybe were broken and this support added to keep the arms from wobbling?
Even if that is correct it may still be a 'copycat' chair.
But check for a tag under the arms also.
This a hard one to say. You did not over pay for this piece. But, without markings , brand name, serial# etc. ,can not be sure without a professional . You could take more pictures and include underneath the chair for appraising - here is a link to learning what you have- www.antique-hq.com/
it might be in the style of Murphy chair, but without the tag or some other certificate, it is probably not
I hope the person who sold it to you did not claim it was. Though you probably paid a good price for this nice useful piece of furniture even without a pedigree, it would still be a rotten trick if they had.
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