In this easy chair, a classic Late Baroque New England example, the C-scrolled arm supports seen on earlier chairs have been replaced by tapering conical shapes, which in New England remained popular throughout the Late Baroque and Rococo periods. By the mid-eighteenth century this design had become so standardized that regional characteristics are difficult to discern.

Technical notes: Black walnut, soft maple (rear legs); soft maple. The top of the wings and crest rail retain their original upholstery materials and were not sampled. The easy chair’s construction follows the standard eighteenth-century New England practice (see B.69.252). The back retains its original webbing, grass stuffing, and linen cover.

Related examples: Downs 1952, no. 74; Kane 1976, pp. 227–29, no. 212; Jobe and Kaye 1984, pp. 362–64, no. 101; Heckscher 1985, pp. 121–22, nos. 70, 71; Jobe et al. 1991, pp. 120–22, no. 44; Wood 1996, pp. 68–69, no. 29.

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.