- Great Chair
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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
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