- Easy Chair
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In 1757 George Washington received a shipment of English furniture that included “A Mahagoney easy Chair—on Casters coverd with ditto [yellow silk and worsted damask] and a Check Case.” In addition to a fine upholstery fabric, easy chairs typically had a durable slipcover that could be easily removed and cleaned. The Bayou Bend example’s loose-fitting reproduction cover suggests this practice. This fine easy chair is also distinguished by its shell-carved knees.
Technical notes: Soft maple; birch (top of the wings), soft maple. The construction follows the standard eighteenth-century New England practice (see B.69.252).
Related examples: Downs 1952, no. 80. The Bayou Bend chair’s carved knees bear comparison with the carving on a high chest attributed to the cabinetmaker Grindal Rawson (1719–1803) of Providence (Monahon 1980, p. 134).
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.
ProvenanceR. Hanon, by September 17, 1962; [Ginsburg & Levy, New York, September 17, 1962–1966] [1]; purchased by Miss Ima Hogg, 1966; given to MFAH, 1966.
[1] Ginsburg & Levy noted the easy chair from the Winsor family of Providence, Rhode Island.
Exhibition History
Inscriptions, Signatures and Marks
Cataloguing data may change with further research.
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