Compared with the previous example (B.69.252), this easy chair’s precise origin is more open to debate, as it exhibits characteristics of both Boston and Newport furniture. During the eighteenth century, the principal expense in producing an easy chair was the upholsterer’s materials and labor rather than the bare frame. While charges varied, depending on the frame’s complexity and the materials selected, it is estimated that the labor on a typical easy chair was 20 percent of its total expense, the wooden frame 25 percent, and its webbing, stuffing, and cover 55 percent.

Technical notes: Soft maple; soft maple (seat rails, arm supports), eastern white pine (arm scrolls), elm (arm stiles). The easy chair’s construction follows the standard eighteenth-century New England practice (see B.69.252), except that the front legs are secured with a square tenon rather than being dovetailed in. The legs are covered with an intractable over-paint. In 1992 a spurious pencil inscription, “Gostelowe, Jonathan March 10, 1750,” was uncovered on an interior vertical support.

Related examples: Forman 1988, p.366.

Book excerpt: Warren, David B., 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.