By PATRICK MEIGHAN, Telegraph Staff
pmeighan@nashuatelegraph.com

A refurbished Colonial inn will showcase furniture made by a Merrimack craftsman when it’s unveiled Saturday during the American Independence Festival in Exeter.
“I feel very, very pleased that I’ve been able to play some small part in this,” said Chuck Mower, of 4 Depot St. in Merrimack.


Mower, a craftsman who makes Windsor chairs, has been commissioned to make 36 chairs and a table for the Folsom Tavern, located on the grounds of the American Independence Museum in the center of Exeter.

The festival will include the reopening of the tavern, which has been closed while undergoing $1 million in renovations that began in 2004.

The tavern, built from 1773-75, hosted a visit from George Washington and was known as an upscale inn with first-class food, if a tad expensive, said Funi Burdick, executive director of the American Independence Museum.

Located off Water Street in the heart of Exeter, the museum houses an original, annotated copy of the U.S. Constitution and a rare Dunlap broadsheet typeset copy of the Declaration of Independence signed by John Hancock.

The tavern, which has been moved twice from its original location in town, still has its original floors and woodwork. It has several large rooms and an upstairs area for educational programs and “political discourse,” much as happened more than 230 years ago when men sat in the tavern and debated issues surrounding the birth of a nation.

Mower was commissioned to make furniture for that room.

“They will be the exact duplicates of our collection, yet they’ll be made in a way that people will be able to sit in them,” Burdick said.

The intent is to have hands-on activities at the inn, and not to make it a museum with roped-off exhibits, she said.

She said Mower’s work is superb and will make believers of people who doubt that a modern craftsman could produce furniture as exquisitely made and finely detailed as the originals.

In making the chairs, Mower said he uses “all tools that anybody used (in the 18th century) in the original manner.”

“You just feel the artistry and craftsmanship that he put into every piece,” Burdick said. “It’s just a beautiful faithfulness to the original pieces.”

Mower has completed several of the red oak, maple and white pine chairs, which include side, arm and bow-back styles. His shop is in the large barn adjacent to his home just off Route 3 in the Reeds Ferry section of Merrimack.
ENLARGE PHOTO

Staff photo by Bob Hammerstrom
Chuck Mower’s dog Katahdin rests in the doorway next to a chair Mower crafted at his shop for Folsom Tavern at the American Independence Museum in Exeter.
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Standing in his shop recently, Mower, a former selectman and school board member, discussed his craft, noting that it takes up to 35 hours of work to produce a single chair.

The end result indeed is faithful to the original, including ones that Josiah Folsom, a relative of the original tavern owner Samuel Folsom, once made in his Portsmouth shop.

The Windsor chairs look as if they were newly made in 1775, Burdick said. That’s intentional, as the renovation painstakingly strived to make the tavern appear as it was when it opened, she said.

In his shop, Mower has several chairs that he made to look as if they had faded finishes, with red and sparsely painted black coats showing.

“You get that feeling of age with this type of presentation,” Mower said. “It would really take an expert to know the chair isn’t a couple of hundred years old.”

The Independence Museum became familiar with Mower’s work through the New Hampshire Council on the Arts.

“It’s wonderful that we were able to find a craftsman of Chuck’s quality,” said Julie Tiebout, marketing and development director for the American Independence Museum.

Besides his talents as a craftsman, Mower also is skilled at talking about the history of Windsor chairs and the methods that Colonial craftsmen followed.

“I’ve never seen such a great interpreter. He helps people make the connection between the past and the present,” Burdick said.

The American Independence Festival will take place from 10 a.m.-3 p.m. Saturday, with a charge of $5 for events on museum grounds. The events will include actors portraying Thomas Jefferson and George Washington and troop encampments.

Mower will be there demonstrating his craft.

In discussing Colonial chair-making, Mower said he tries to make the point that “it’s about a way of thinking that allows us to make choices about being creative.”

Besides the physical tools craftsmen used then, craftsmen also employed “imagination, perseverance and self-discipline – all of the traits necessary for any of us to apply to our daily lives,” Mower said.

For more information, call the museum at 772-2622 or visit www.independence
museum.org.

Patrick Meighan can be reached at 594-6518 or pmeighan@nashuatelegraph.com.