Side Chair

CultureAmerican
Titles
  • Side Chair
Datec. 1815–1830
Possible placeAugusta, Georgia, United States
MediumMahogany and birch; birch
Dimensions32 3/4 × 19 1/2 × 20 in. (83.2 × 49.5 × 50.8 cm)
Credit LineThe Bayou Bend Collection, museum purchase funded by Mr. and Mrs. Robin Elverson
Object numberB.85.18
Non exposé

Explore Further

Department
Bayou Bend
Object Type
Description

With its reeded stiles and boxy seat, this side chair reflects both New York and Philadelphia design, while the large inlaid oval of light-colored wood on the tablet relates more to slightly earlier furniture made in the Boston-Salem area of Massachusetts. The stay rail of interlaced ovals and the break of the front legs below the seat rail are unusual details; the overall result is something difficult to place. However, the use of birch as a secondary wood as well as the inlay is seen in Piedmont, Georgia, furniture of this period, and the overscale bold oval recalls the ornament of a Georgia sideboard, suggesting a Georgia provenance for this example.


Technical notes: Mahogany, birch (inlaid oval panel); birch (right and rear seat rails, right front corner block).


Related examples: A c. 1810 sideboard in the collection of MESDA is made of birch and ornamented with overscale, slightly naive oval inlays, dark as opposed to light, which relate in concept to the oval on the tablet of this chair (Hind 1979, p. 72). A chest of drawers thought to be from the Augusta area features birch drawers framed in dark cherry (Green 1976a, no. 122). For other examples made of birch, see Green 1976a, nos. 4, 105, 111–13, 138, 144. The Bayou Bend chair was documented in the early 1980s in MESDA’s survey of southern decorative arts (ID no. S-11671). A pair of southern side tables at Winterthur (57.582.1–.2) have similar large pale ovals inlaid in mahogany (Montgomery 1966b, pp. 370–71, no. 356).


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.





Provenance[Robert M. Hicklin, Jr., Spartanburg, South Carolina]; purchased by MFAH, 1985.
Inscriptions, Signatures and Marks
[no inscriptions]
[no marks]

Cataloguing data may change with further research.

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Side Chair (one of a set of four)
c. 1750–1800
Mahogany, birch; birch
B.69.135.1
Side Chair (one of a pair)
c. 1805–1820
Mahogany, birch, and unidentified inlay; birch and soft maple
B.57.70.1
Side Chair (one of a pair)
c. 1805–1820
Mahogany, birch, and unidentified inlay; birch and soft maple
B.57.70.2
Side Chair (one of a set of four)
c. 1750–1800
Mahogany, birch; birch
B.69.135.2
Side Chair (one of a set of four)
c. 1750–1800
Mahogany, birch; birch
B.69.135.3
.4 on the left, .3 on the right
c. 1750–1800
Mahogany, birch; birch
B.69.135.4
Easy Chair
c. 1750–1800
Mahogany, soft maple, and birch; soft maple and birch
B.57.76
Lolling Chair
c. 1810–1825
Mahogany and birch; birch and eastern white pine
B.69.128
Side Chair
c. 1750–1800
Mahogany; birch
B.69.361.8
Side Chair
c. 1750–1800
Mahogany; birch
B.69.361.9
Side Chair
c. 1750–1800
Mahogany; birch
B.69.361.6
Side Chair
c. 1750–1800
Mahogany; birch
B.69.361.7