Rhode Island cabinetworkers and their clientele never embraced the Rococo style with the same degree of exuberance that their Massachusetts, New York, Philadelphia, and Charleston counterparts displayed. This side chair’s design may have been adapted from a plate in Robert Manwaring’s design book, but it more likely is patterned after an English example. The combination of stop-fluted Marlborough legs and distinctive banister identifies this chair as among the most fully developed Rococo interpretations in Rhode Island furniture. Although it is traditionally ascribed to Newport, no documented example is recorded, and a reference to similar chairs with Providence histories raises the possibility that the type was fashioned in more than one place.

Technical notes: Mahogany; soft maple (slip seat). The banister is set into the shoe. The seat retains its original webbing and stuffing. The front seat rail is impressed twice with II, the seat, V.

Related examples: Chairs in museum collections include Bishop 1972, pp. 160–61, no. 202; Jobe and Kaye 1984, pp. 409–10, no. 122.

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, 1988.