Side Chair

CultureAmerican
Titles
  • Side Chair
Datec. 1780–1800
Made inRhode Island, United States
MediumMahogany; soft maple
Dimensions38 1/8 × 21 1/8 × 19 in. (96.8 × 53.7 × 48.3 cm)
Credit LineThe Bayou Bend Collection, gift of Miss Ima Hogg
Object numberB.57.71
Current Location
Bayou Bend Collection and Gardens
Newport Room
Exposé

Explore Further

Department
Bayou Bend
Object Type
Description

Rhode Island cabinetworkers and their clientele never embraced the Rococo style with the same degree of exuberance that their Massachusetts, New York, Philadelphia, and Charleston counterparts displayed. This side chair’s design may have been adapted from a plate in Robert Manwaring’s design book, but it more likely is patterned after an English example. The combination of stop-fluted Marlborough legs and distinctive banister identifies this chair as among the most fully developed Rococo interpretations in Rhode Island furniture. Although it is traditionally ascribed to Newport, no documented example is recorded, and a reference to similar chairs with Providence histories raises the possibility that the type was fashioned in more than one place.

Technical notes: Mahogany; soft maple (slip seat). The banister is set into the shoe. The seat retains its original webbing and stuffing. The front seat rail is impressed twice with II, the seat, V.

Related examples: Chairs in museum collections include Bishop 1972, pp. 160–61, no. 202; Jobe and Kaye 1984, pp. 409–10, no. 122.

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, 1988.


ProvenanceMaxim Karolik (1893–1963), Boston, and Newport, Rhode Island; purchased by Miss Ima Hogg, 1957; given to MFAH, 1969.
Inscriptions, Signatures and Marks
[no inscriptions]
Front seat rail impressed twice with II
Seat impressed with V

Cataloguing data may change with further research.

If you have questions about this work of art or the MFAH Online Collection please contact us.

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scan from file photograph
c. 1785–1799
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c. 1800–1820
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c. 1800–1820
Mahogany and unidentified inlay; soft maple and yellow-poplar
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George Bright
c. 1750–1805
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James Graham
c. 1755–1775
Mahogany; soft maple and red oak
B.2017.18
Side Chair (one of a pair)
John Townsend
1800
Mahogany; birch, soft maple, eastern white pine, and poplar
B.66.11.1