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.