While the scroll-back Grecian chair with paw feet was relatively common in New York, the most popular form features the lyre or spread-wing eagle as stays or banisters. This example, with its harp and column stay, one of only seven or eight known today, would seem a rare form. Yet the 1817 New York price book includes the harp banister with column as an expensive alternative to the lyre. Another costly detail is the cross-banded veneer on the leading surface of the front legs between the seat rail and paw feet.

Technical notes: Mahogany, mahogany veneer; ash (front and rear seat rails), cherry (slip seat), brass.

Related examples: A pair at Winterthur (acc. nos. 57.717.1, .2, see Montgomery 1966b, no. 74); MMA (acc. no. 1972.136); Kaufman Collection, Norfolk, Virginia (Cooper 1993, fig. 70); Stone Collection, Washington, D.C. (Sack 1993, p. 63). At one point a pair was in the collection of Walter Jeffords, New York (“Girl Scout Loan Exhibit,” New York, 1929), and the same pair or another was in the collection of Mitchel Taradash (Winchester 1941, p. 90). The Taradash chairs are presumably the ones now in the Kaufman and Stone collections. A single chair was offered by Christie’s (sale 7822, January 22, 1994, lot 388). The Christie’s example is marked V (of a set). The Bayou Bend, Winterthur, and Kaufman chairs are not marked.

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.