The earliest known depiction of an American Neoclassical-style chair appears in George Shipley’s 1790 advertisement for his New York shop. The Bayou Bend armchair is one of a group that relates to this illustration, its popularity substantiated by the expansive range of its production, from the Boston area down to Charleston. In the south its prevalence is attributable to New York’s substantial trade routes, which also extended to the West Indies, South America, and beyond. Neoclassical-style chairs enjoyed a lengthy chronological tenure as evidenced by the 1815 edition of the New York book of prices.

Technical notes: Mahogany; ash (seat rails), eastern white pine (corner blocks), sweetgum (medial braces). The banister is a single element. The seat frame is constructed with two medial braces and angular rear corner blocks.

Related examples: New York chairs include Hipkiss 1941, pp. 160–61, nos. 96, 97; Miller 1956, pp. 52, 54, no. 77; Gaines 1961, p. 465; Randall 1965, pp. 198, 199, 201, no. 159; Montgomery 1966b, pp. 81–82, 106, nos. 22, 50; White House 1975, p. 84; Antiques 114 (October 1978), p. 666; Lyle and Zimmerman 1980, p. 200; Jobe et al. 1991, pp. 215–16, no. 82; Fales 1976, p. 76, no. 139. Norfolk and Charleston examples are recorded in Kane 1976, pp. 162–63, no. 140; Hind 1979, p. n; Hurst and Prown 1997, pp. 132–34.

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.