I was invited, kind of at the last minute, to an art opening by a friend tonight. I didn't know when I accepted that the opening was for an exhibit about The Furniture of The State Department, which may float your boat but sounded terribly boring to me. Somehow I can't get very excited about dressers and plates and card tables, no matter how ornate the feet or the filigree carvings. It's a failing, I guess. It was not as dull as I expected, but that is very faint praise.
Anyway, the placards for all the chairs had descriptions talking about the "unusually broad splat" or the "distinctive pierced splat." I surmised, and later confirmed when I ran into a woman I know who is a big cheese with the local historical society, that a splat is the back middle portion of a chair. (Here's a picture of a chair with a pierced splat, according to Google.)
Don't say I never taught you anything.
I thought all this time that "splat" was just the sound a ripe pumpkin or jack-o-lantern makes hitting the road after being hurled off a porch. Silly me.
Al
Posted by: Al Nye | November 03, 2004 at 09:31 PM
Thanks for the lesson.
Please advise us on Crest rail, stretcher, and ease-it, so we can finish our new yankee workshop video project.
we have a lot of head scratching going on here.
Posted by: B | November 04, 2004 at 07:47 AM
Around here, "splat" is the command key to either side of the space bar on a Macintosh keyboard.
Posted by: pjm | November 04, 2004 at 04:03 PM