Artists of the Abbey

Presider’s Chair, 1960

The Archives feature in last week’s edition of The Current, titled “A Brief Look at Portsmouth Past,” included some information on what is today known as The Manor House, currently a multi-purpose building scheduled for an extensive renovation, more sensitive due to its historical underpinnings. Known previously as Hall Manor, or the Amos D. Smith House, built in 1864, it is contemporaneous with the nearby Brayton House across Cory’s Lane which is maintained by The Preservation Society of Newport County. On one of my first springtime visits years ago to Portsmouth for the annual June Institute, I became fascinated by the large black-and-white photo blowups lining the walls of the Stillman Dining Hall. One in particular kept drawing me back. It shows a room in a rather nice house which could have been a still shot from a New England prep-school film set in the 1940’s or 1950’s, like Dead Poets’ Society, School Ties, or A Separate Peace.  A woman, the wife of the Assistant Headmaster, Sue Brady (1907-1971), is pictured seated on an elaborate armchair pouring and serving tea to jacketed schoolboys, teachers perhaps, and a Benedictine monk. It was taken during the academic year of 1942-43. This is the story of that chair, probably original to Hall Manor, and how it was brought back to life last year by another woman, Lizabeth Cottrell, of nearby Tiverton, almost 80 years after the photographer posed the photo. 

Some years after I first spotted the photo, and after taking up residence here, I was in a room in the monastic library which served as Abbot Matthew’s office. In the corner was an ornate high-backed armchair with barley twist turnings on its legs and framing its back. It once had woven-cane inserts in its seat and back, but both had been torn, rendering the chair unusable. Except that, in typical monastic fashion, a piece of plywood had been placed on the seat, thus turning it into an end table holding a high stack of books. As of yet, I had not made the connection between this end-table armchair and the tea-table armchair in the photo. 

 

 

1960 Dedication of the Church of St. Gregory the Great (presider’s chair at right)

 It wasn’t until I examined another beautiful photo, framed and hanging inside a dark hallway in the monastery, that I made the connection. Taken from the second level gallery, it shows the church interior on the day of its dedication and consecration in 1960. Situated next to the Marian altar is a dais, or low platform, in front of an elaborate drapery backing and canopy, fringed and tasseled, with the bishop’s episcopal coat of arms hanging above. Commanding the viewer’s attention on the dais is that armchair, now taking its place in the sanctuary as the Presider’s Chair. I asked Abbot Matthew for permission to get an estimate on restoring the chair to its former glory as a, well, as a chair and not a makeshift end table. 

 

 

Mrs. Sue Brady in the chair at tea, Manor House (1942-43)

A simple internet search led me across the Sakonnet River to Liz Cottrell. Upon examining the chair, she explained that the replacement caning needed to be hand-woven, not laid down in pre-woven, machine-made sheets of caning. Decades ago, I had some of my grandparent’s Arts & Crafts furniture restored, which called for the “sheet” method, so I knew of what Liz spoke. Her estimate was within our budget and she went to work. 

Her business is called, appropriately, Please Sit Down. “About forty years ago, when my daughter was two,” Liz said, “we started picking up antiques.” She would restore them and sell them for a profit. But some of the pieces needed re-caning, so she enrolled in a caning class of ten students at the Swinburne School for Household Arts on Pelham St. in Newport’s Historic Hill neighborhood. Now closed, Liz remembers the location offering a clear view of the Viking Tower. Classes were held in two large rooms on the first floor, one of which had a big walk-in fireplace. One day Liz was asked by a reporter for a Newport newspaper if she could interview her about her newly-acquired chair-caning skills.  It resulted in a quarter-page spread, and her business took off as a result. One of her first customers was a neighbor of the school who had read the interview, a woman who lived in the “Captain’s House” across the street. Turns out she also collected antiques and had some chairs which required repairing or, as Liz said, “just needed some T.L.C.” Sadly, the school did eventually close, although Mrs. Swinburne’s legacy lives on through a scholarship foundation. The Greek Revival House, known locally as “Swinburne,” was sold to a private owner in 2016 for $2.8 million. 

 

 

Lizabeth Cottrell, with her handiwork

Antiques still find their way to Liz’s combined house/workshop in Tiverton for T.L.C., thanks to her in-demand skill and artistry. She enjoys collecting rockers, in particular fine Lincoln rockers and porch rockers, and she especially prizes a child-sized Lincoln rocker. Business picked up during the pandemic, when people were staying at home and looking to spruce things up, projects which had been put off for years. A typical waiting time now for a finished item is 10 months and she is at the point where she has the luxury of passing on some projects. Somehow Liz still has time to serve as the secretary of the SeatWeavers’ Guild.

 

 

The chair, renovated and ready

Since its return to Portsmouth last year, the restored Presider’s Chair now resides in the sanctuary, close to where it stood in the 1960 photo. On Saturday, May 7, it will be occupied by Bishop Thomas J. Tobin as he presides over the blessing of Fr. Michael Brunner as the 4^th abbot of Portsmouth Abbey. As the finishing touch, a custom seat cushion was fashioned by the staff at The Fabric Connection in Newport using fabric gifted to the monks by the cloistered sisters at the Monastery of Our Lady of Grace in North Guilford, Connecticut. It has already elicited many favorable comments from those who have seen it, thanks to Liz. In its lifetime, the chair apparently has been used in only two buildings on this campus, the Manor House and the Abbey Church, and it now takes its place once again as an adjunct to our monastic liturgies.