This type of rush-bottom chair with vase-shaped splat, yoke crest, and tubular front legs with pad feet was produced in great numbers in New York as well as adjacent New Jersey and Connecticut. The tubular leg and foot motif may be derived from chairs produced in northern England. Although the ball-and-ring stretcher, vase splat, and pad feet are all elements seen in the early Baroque period, these chairs continued to be made in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.

Technical notes: B.69.510.1, soft maple (legs, front seat rail), hickory (stretchers, side and rear seat rails), yellow-poplar (splat), sweetgum (crest rail, stay rail), rush (replaced); B.69.510.2, soft maple (legs, front stretcher), hickory (remaining stretchers, rear and side seat rails), yellow-poplar (crest rail, splat), eastern white pine (stay rail, exposed corners of front seat rail), cherry (front seat rail), rush (replaced); WS branded on back (probably the mark of an owner).

Related examples: A pair at MMA bears the stamp of Michael Smith (Heckscher 1985, p. 61, no. 20); Mabel Brady Garvan Collection (Kane 1976, pp. 103–4, no. 88).

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.