Q:  Our family bought this chair years ago at an estate sale for Hinky Dink Kenna, a crooked alderman in Chicago. The chair dimensions are as follows: back height is 40 inches, seat height is 17 ½ inches, seat width is 21 inches, the back support is 22 inches.

A:  I would first like to give a bit of information on Hinky Dink Kenna. Since I was young I have had this strange fascination with all things mobster related, including the graft and corruption of politicians. Maybe I was a gangster moll in a previous life.

Chicago was the home base for the well-known gangster Al Capone. That is why Chicago is on my radar. In the 1890s, Hinky Dink “Michael” Kenna and Bathouse John Coughlin created a powerhouse political machine in Chicago’s first ward district “based on graft and protection money from the saloons, brothels, and gambling halls of the Levee district.” ** The Levee district was called “The Wickedest Place in the USA,” with streets named “Satan’s Mile,” and a bar named “Bucket of Blood.” This website has a couple of great maps of the Levee area, www.myalcaponemuseum.com. Hinky Dink owned a couple of saloons in the Levee district and was known to be a very smart, quiet man; those are usually the ones you need to watch out for. He passed away in 1946. Al Capone knew and worked with both of these men but was particularly fond of Hinky Dink.

Now, on to your chair. This is what I call a fantasy piece. Your accent chair is fairly contemporary — probably made in the late 1940s or 1950s, if not later. It does not depict a particular known style such as Queen Anne, George III, or other older furniture styles.
Upon close inspection, on the ends of the top rail, you can see a clear line attaching the edges of the top rail to the back uprights. This is also visible on the back. In an older piece, these attachments would be virtually invisible, and in a chair that is hand-carved, the top rail would be one continuous piece.

There are no stretcher bars attached to the legs. These are a necessity in chairs that are solid wood and heavy. The front legs are in the Queen Anne style, more or less; the claw feet are a bit overdone with three rows of “claws,” and the back legs should show a tiny outward curve, yet they are straight legs.

The carved ladies fit, more or less, into the Art Nouveau style, but the rest of the chair does not echo that period. Design Tuscano used to make and sell fantasy pieces, but a search of their furniture did not show your accent chair.

With that being said, I adore this accent chair and I’m sure that Hinky Dink did as well. Even though your chair is not a piece that you can sell and retire on the proceeds, I still put a resale value of $500 to $650 on it. This price depends on the venue through which you sell it and the area, be it rural, suburbs, or large metro city.

Just a little side note, it is not uncommon for people who conduct estate sales to bring in pieces from other estates. Also, we don’t know when the estate sale was held. Hinky Dink died in 1946, but it could have been several years before his belongings were sold. We really don’t have a clear provenance on this particular accent chair.