As with most types of Windsor furniture in America, the settee was first made in Pennsylvania. The form, which appeared in the 1760s, relates in both design and construction to the contemporaneous low-back armchair (see B.64.31, B.79.204). Typically, the molded crest is lapped over the extension of the arms where they meet in the back. The knuckled arm terminals and arrow turnings at the ends of the stretchers here are early features, superseded by the later style of bamboo-turned spindles and legs. An unusually large number of spindles—sixty-three—distinguishes this settee. The outward flare at the base of the legs is a feature associated with Lancaster County.

Technical notes: Yellow-poplar (seat, crest rail), soft maple (middle right rear leg, left medial stretcher, spindles), hickory (spindles).

Related examples: Santore 1987, p. 192, no. 205, has a similar outward flare at the base of the front legs. 

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.