This masterful armchair reflects the maturity of the Late Baroque yet, with its carved acanthus knees, foliate, strapwork banister, and naturalistic shell topping the crest rail, it is fully conversant with Rococo taste. This unusual configuration may represent the brief period of transition between the Late Baroque and Rococo, or perhaps it is a design that never realized widespread popularity.

Technical notes: Mahogany; eastern white pine (slip seat). The interior front seat rail is bowed and its lip is applied. The seat rails are tenoned through the stiles. The rear seat rail is not nearly as deep as the shoe. The inside of the front and rear seat rails is carved I. An illegible inscription is on the slip seat frame. Luke Beckerdite comments that the carving imitates the body of the work he has assigned to the same hand that carved the great Philadelphia high chest in the Garvan Collection at Yale (Ward 1988, pp. 280–83, no. 147), referring to the unknown craftsman as the “Garvan carver.”

Related examples: Most closely related is Heckscher 1985, pp. 90–92, no. 45. A side chair with related carving is in Downs 1952, no. 115. Wallace Nutting offered a reproduction of this armchair in Antiques 36 (November 1939), p. 214.

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.