Although an exact prototype for this chair has not been identified, certain motifs are related to designs by both Thomas Chippendale and Robert Manwaring. The asymmetrical ruffle of the seat rail bears comparison with labeled chairs by James Gillingham (1736–1781), Thomas Tufft (d. 1788), and Benjamin Randolph (1721–1791).  Attempts to link the Bayou Bend chair to a documented example underscore a natural propensity to ascribe objects to a craftsman, while challenging the logic of basing an attribution on a singular motif.

Technical notes: Mahogany; southern yellow pine (slip seat, interior rear seat rail), Atlantic white cedar (front corner blocks), yellow-poplar (rear corner blocks). The seat rails are tenoned through the stiles. The front corner blocks are two-part quarter round, while the rear blocks are single quarter round. The frame retains its eighteenth-century webbing and stuffing. The front seat rail bears the stamped letters CC, the slip seat, C.

Related examples: Antiques 15 (June 1929), p. 468; Antiques 32 (August 1937), p. 51; Comstock 1953, p. 474; Antiques 83 (March 1963), p. 259; Antiques 93 (June 1968), p. 685; Davis 1972, p. 197, no. 8; Antiques 106 (December 1974), p. 905; Antiques (November 1976), p. 837; Sotheby’s, New York, sale 5682, January 30, 1988, lot 1775.

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.