Armchair

CultureAmerican
Titles
  • Armchair
Datec. 1730–1745
Made inBoston, Massachusetts, United States
MediumSoft maple and birch
Dimensions46 3/8 × 24 1/2 × 22 in. (117.8 × 62.2 × 55.9 cm)
Credit LineThe Bayou Bend Collection, gift of Miss Ima Hogg
Object numberB.61.40
Current Location
Bayou Bend Collection and Gardens
Pine Room
Exposé

Explore Further

Department
Bayou Bend
Object Type
Description

In response to competition from im­ported London-made caned seating furni­ture, Boston chairmakers and turners began producing their own cane products at the beginning of the eighteenth cen­tury. This armchair, with its molded stiles, represents a late type; indeed, the yoke design of the crest anticipates the later Baroque treatment. The turned rear legs, centrally placed medial stretcher, and high front and rear stretchers, all features that derive from English caned chair de­sign, differentiate this type of chair from the treatment seen on the banister-back chair Bend (see B.58.106) The Bayou Bend armchair bears a punched capital I with a central cross serif on the back seat rail. No fewer than twenty-six other Boston caned chairs bearing the same device are now known.

Technical notes: Soft maple, birch (rear seat rail). All four feet have new pieces, which replaced losses when the chair was converted into a rocker. At one time, the chair was up­holstered over the back and seat, as evidenced by nail holes. The caning is not original, nor is the reddish-grained paint. A paint sample shows that this black-and-red graining overlies a brown ground layer (applied rapidly, judging from the large number and size of air holes), which covered the wood and the remnants of an earlier brown paint film.

Related examples: The closest is a side chair with identical crest in the collection of the Pilgrim Hall Museum, Plymouth, Massa­chusetts. A chair almost identical was adver­tised by Ginsburg and Levy (Antiques 126 [October 1984], p. 656). A single chair was exhibited at the Bernard and S. Dean Levy Gallery, New York, in 1988 (Levy Gallery 1988b, p. 9); another was advertised by Peter H. Eaton Antiques, Newton Junction, New Hampshire (Antiques 123 [March 1983], p. 530).

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[Ginsburg & Levy, New York]; purchased by Miss Ima Hogg, 1961; given to MFAH, by 1966.
Exhibition History

Inscriptions, Signatures and Marks
[no inscriptions]
[no marks]

Cataloguing data may change with further research.

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Armchair
c. 1700–1725
Soft maple; hard maple, birch, ash, poplar, aspen poplar or cottonwood
B.69.44
Easy Chair
c. 1750–1800
Mahogany, soft maple, and birch; soft maple and birch
B.57.76
Armchair
c. 1790–1810
Yellow-poplar, soft maple, elm, ash, birch, and beech
B.69.422
Armchair
c. 1750–1800
Mahogany; soft maple and birch
B.57.95
Armchair
c. 1735–1790
Soft maple and birch; ash
B.68.3
Easy Chair
c. 1750–1780
Soft maple; birch and soft maple
B.66.1
Armchair
c. 1740–1760
Soft maple; red oak and soft maple
B.69.223
Drop-Leaf Table
c. 1730–1800
Soft maple and birch; eastern white pine and birch
B.69.220
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
Couch
c. 1720–1740
Soft maple
B.90.5
Easy Chair
c. 1715–1735
Soft maple, eastern white pine, hard maple, and birch
B.58.104