Great Chair
- Great Chair
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It is rare that the work of an individual seventeenth-century chairmaking shop can be identified. In general, the turned members, triple spindles of the back, finials, and front post terminals of this small example conform to the norm of turned great chairs produced in Massachusetts in the late seventeenth-century and known today by the generic term Carver after a similar one traditionally owned by Governor John Carver (1575–1621) of the Plymouth Colony. However, the distinctive turnings of this example, in particular, the double flattened ball of the front post terminals, have been identified as hallmarks of one of a related group of Plymouth County craftsmen whose style is thought to have evolved in the shop of Ephraim Tinkham II.
Technical notes: Ash (posts, stretchers), white oak (rear seat rail), soft maple (middle vertical spindle); rush (replaced).
Related examples: St. George 1979, figs. 46, 47, 49; Sotheby's, New York, sale 5599, June 26, 1987, lot 200, a similar example but with turnings under the seat in the so-called Brewster style.
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.
ProvenanceBy tradition owned by the Ellis family of Carver, Plymouth County, Massachusetts; [John S. Walton, New York]; purchased by Miss Ima Hogg, June 29, 1956; given to MFAH, by 1966.
Exhibition History
Published References Advertisement of P. W. Hathaway. The Magazine Antiques 58 (July 1950), p. 15; St. George, Robert Blair. The Wrought Covenant, p. 50, fig. 48. Brockton, Mass.: Brockton Art Center Fuller Memorial, 1979; Warren, David B. Bayou Bend: American Furniture, Paintings and Silver from the Bayou Bend Collection, p. 7, no. 6. Houston: Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; Boston: New York Graphic Society, 1975; Warren, David B. Bayou Bend: The Interiors and the Gardens, p. 15. Houston: Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, 1988. Inscriptions, Signatures and Marks
Cataloguing data may change with further research.
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