- Armchair
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Painted banister-back chairs offered an inexpensive alternative to the leather-upholstered chairs made in Boston. The application of a black painted finish made it possible to combine four inexpensive woods. This armchair and accompanying side chair represent survivals of a larger group and are indicative of the large sets of matching seating furniture that became common in the Early Baroque period. Less common is the design of the crest, which is more solid than the norm. The Baroque arched and scrolled elements echo the design of contemporary gravestones, while the central vertical detail relates to the cresting of a small group of early upholstered easy chairs. Double-ball feet, like those on the armchair, occur occasionally in eastern Massachusetts. The simple columnar design used for the turned arm supports, stiles, and banisters and a history of ownership on the frontier west of Boston suggest the possibility of rural rather than urban manufacture.
Technical notes: B.69.54, soft maple (crest rail, left front leg, arms, stretchers, right seat rail), ash (front seat rail, right banister), poplar (left rear post), hickory (rear stretcher); B.69.55, poplar (crest rail, left rear post), ash (left stretcher, left banister), soft maple (front and rear stretcher, front seat rail); center two split banisters and left seat rail are replacements; both stiles are broken above urn on block.
Related examples: A third chair of the set that descended in the Williams family, private collection, Portland, Oregon; Historic Deerfield (Fales 1976, p. 29, no. 35); private collection, Mendenhall, Pennsylvania; PMA (acc. no. 73–259–3).
Book excerpt: David B. Warren, Michael K. Brown, Elizabeth Ann Coleman, and Emily Ballew Neff. American Decorative Arts and Paintings in the Bayou Bend Collection. Houston: Princeton Univ. Press, 1998.
ProvenanceBy tradition owned by John Bigelow (1674–1769) and his wife, Jerusha Garfield Bigelow (1677–1758), who were married in 1696 in Waterfield, Massachusetts, and later settled in Marlborough, Massachusetts; inherited by their son Gershom Bigelow (d. 1812); inherited by his son Timothy Bigelow (d. 1817); inherited by his son Ephraim Bigelow (d. 1843); inherited by his sister Lovinia Bigelow; inherited by her daughter; inherited by her son William Williams by 1883; inherited by his granddaughter Mildred E. McCurdy by 1940; [Lillian Blankley Cogan, Farmington, Connecticut]; purchased by Miss Ima Hogg, 1954; given to MFAH, 1969.
Exhibition History
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