Thomas Chippendale’s The Gentleman and Cabinet-Maker’s Director was the most popular eighteenth-century furniture design book, and in colonial America the most influential of a plethora of publications. Its greatest impact was in Philadelphia, where cabinetmakers Thomas Affleck and Benjamin Randolph, as well as the Library Company, owned copies. In 1775, Philadelphia cabinetmaker John Folwell proposed publishing an American edition.

This magnificent armchair, commissioned by Lieutenant Governor John Penn of Pennsylvania (1729–1795), masterfully integrates Chinese and Gothic fretwork and richly carved, French asymmetrical scrolls, the trio of inspirational sources that Chippendale advanced. The chair’s lines, proportions, and ornament are highly unusual in American furniture. Their design, more closely related to English examples, recall a series of plates for “French Chairs” published in the Director.

Nine chairs from this set are known, and it is believed that they were made en suite with the great Chew family sofa at Cliveden. John Penn’s superb seat furniture, like its English counterparts, was conceived as forming an impressive row lining the walls of one of his principal rooms, conveying his position to all who entered.

Technical notes: Mahogany; white oak. The armchair is constructed with corner braces in both its seat and back. The bases, brackets, and crest rail peaks are restorations. Another chair from the set retains evidence of its original red silk upholstery and gilt tacks. Luke Beckerdite has attributed the chair’s carving to Bernard and Jugiez.

Related examples: Nine other armchairs are recorded: Milley 1980, pp. 117, 119, 195; PMA1976, pp. 100–101, no. 79; Hummel 1976, p. 54; Conger 1991, pp. 138–39, no. 55; Heckscher and Bowman 1992, pp. 212–13, no. 151; and one in a private collection. What appears to be another chair from this set is pictured in Antiques 84 (September 1963), p. 308. These chairs are also published in Kimball 1931a, p. 375; Antiques 27 (May 1935), p. 192; Carson 1947, pp. 10–11, 13; Antiques (November 1951), p. 354; LACMA 1955, pp. 40, 44; Carson 1968, p. 188; Hummel 1970–71, part 2, pp. 907–9; Hornor 1977, pl. 117; Fitzgerald 1982, p. 66; Sack 1987, p. 170; Federhen 1994, pp. 300–303.

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.