The stop-fluted Marlborough leg is a regional preference that is unique in America to Rhode Island furniture. It appears on a range of forms, including side chairs (B.57.71), sofas, a variety of table types (B.57.61), and beds. The Bayou Bend easy chair, with its stop-fluted legs, essential stretchers, and tapered conical arms, is a classic interpretation of the form. Like New England cabriole-legged examples, these chairs were produced with rounded or occasionally serpentine crest rails, the latter more in keeping with this type of leg. The chair’s tufted cushion reproduces a period example.

Technical notes: Mahogany; soft maple (rear upholstery rail, arm supports), birch (wing stile). The stretchers are blind-tenoned. There is no evidence that the frame was finished with decorative tacking. Penciled on a wing is the notation: “UPHOLSTERED JULY 30, 1914 AT 347 MOODY ST”; the city has not been identified.

Related examples: Greenlaw 1974, pp. 78–79, no. 69; Stillinger 1990, pp. 52–53, 152.

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.