Great Chair

CultureAmerican
Titles
  • Great Chair
Datec. 1660–1700
Made inEast Haven-Branford area, Connecticut, United States
MediumAsh
Dimensions49 × 26 × 20 in. (124.5 × 66 × 50.8 cm)
Credit LineThe Bayou Bend Collection, gift of Miss Ima Hogg
Object numberB.69.354
Non exposé

Explore Further

Department
Bayou Bend
Object Type
Description

The relatively large size of this great chair underscores its importance as an object of status in the seventeenth-century household. While basically a simple turned and joined form, the great chair derived its or­nament and distinctive differences from the variety of turnings chosen by the craftsman as he worked the members on his lathe. He often emphasized the termi­nation of the stiles with tall finials. Repe­tition of long ogee shapes, as seen here on the stiles and front posts, has been identified with chairs produced in the New Haven Colony. A Mannerist attenua­tion distinguishes the three vase-shaped spindles of the back.

Related examples: Kane 1973, p. 71, illus­trates a chair probably made by the same craftsman, along with other examples, pp. 75–77; Kirk 1967, no. 202; MMA (10.125.208). 

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 the Palmer and Harrison families, Branford, Connecticut; […];[John Kenneth Byard (1905–1960), Silvermine, Norwalk, Connecticut]; purchased by Miss Ima Hogg, 1953; given to MFAH, prior to 1969.
Exhibition History

Inscriptions, Signatures and Marks
[no inscriptions]
[no marks]

Cataloguing data may change with further research.

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Great Chair
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Great Chair
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Side Chair (one of a pair)
c. 1785–1820
Mahogany and holly; ash
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c. 1720–1750
Painted poplar, soft maple, black ash, elm, and white oak
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Side Chair (one of a pair)
c. 1810–1825
Mahogany, ebony, and rosewood; ash, eastern white pine, and brass
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scan from file photograph
George Jakob Hunzinger
c. 1869
Black walnut, ash, and upholstery (not original)
B.75.57