This example, adapted from the high-back armchair type produced in Philadelphia in the 1760s, is designed to function like a small office, with writing arm surface with drawer below and a drawer underneath the seat. The application of a green wool covering to the writing arm reflects a common eighteenth-century usage for writing surfaces. Very often Windsor chairmakers branded their name to their product; this example bears the brand of Ebenezer Tracy, a prolific maker working in Lisbon, Connecticut.

Technical notes: Eastern white pine (locking board, writing arm, writing arm drawer bottom, seat drawer bottom, seat drawer stop), yellow-poplar (writing arm drawer sides, seat drawer sides, seat drawer front and back), soft maple (left arm, locking slide runners, writing arm drawer runners, legs, turned arm supports, crest rail, seat drawer runners), white oak (supporting arm, horizontal back member, stretchers, spindles), chestnut (seat), butternut (writing arm drawer stop). Branded EB:TRACY at the bottom of the seat behind the drawer. The modern baize cover on the writing surface is based on evidence of green wool threads found under the original tacks and also on Ralph Earl’s Portrait of Dr. Mason Fitch Cogswell, 1791 (B.76.184), in which, the subject is seated in a low-back Windsor writing arm chair. 

Related examples: A low-back chair, formerly at Williamsburg (Greenlaw 1974, no. 159), transferred in 1993 to Historic Deerfield; a related example with Tracy’s name, Norwich, Connecticut, and the date 1797 branded beneath the seat (Anderson Galleries, New York, Maynard sale, 1926, lot 144); Connecticut Historical Society Hartford (Antiques and The Arts Weekly, October 1, 1988); Yale (Kane 1976, no. 173); Kirk 1967, no. 249; Historic Deerfield (Fales 1976. p. 85, no. 161); four in DAPC; Sack 1969–92, vol. 1, p. 3, no. 5, Sack 1969–92, vol. 1, p. 39, no. 121, and Sack 1969–92, vol. 8, p. 2238, no. 2758. According to Nancy Goyne Evans, 160 branded examples of Tracy’s work have been identified (Evans 1982). An unidentified chair at MMA is surely the work of Tracy (Davidson and Stillinger 1985, p. 154).

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.