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Wharton Esherick, Hessian Hills Child’s Chair, 1931. Red oak and leather. In 1924, Wharton Esherick created a prototype for a child’s chair, now in the permanent collection of the Wharton Esherick Museum, of which he would make six the following year. These chairs were made in lieu of tuition payment for his then 9-year-old daughter, Mary, to accompany her to the newly minted progressive school for children in Croton, N.Y., known as the Hessian Hills School. In the fall of 1930, the school suffered a fire that took with it the chairs Esherick delivered in 1925. Funded by insurance money, Esherick made 15 replacement chairs in 1931. This is one of three 1931 Hessian Hill chairs known to exist. Two others are in the collection of the Modernism Museum Mount Dora. Moderne Gallery.