- Roundabout Chair
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The American roundabout chair was produced exclusively during the Early and Late Baroque and Rococo periods. As with so many Late Baroque forms and motifs, a plausible precedent may be found in Chinese furniture, specifically, the continuous horseshoe or round chair. In America, the first references to roundabouts date from the 1730s. A considerable number of New England and New York examples survive, attesting to its wide-spread popularity in those areas. Essentially Late Baroque in contour, the Bayou Bend chair is distinguished by the fluid passage of Rococo carving ornamenting the crest rail.
Technical notes: Mahogany; sweetgum (corner blocks), eastern white pine (seat rail strips), red oak (slip seat). The front leg is tenoned inside the seat rail. The banister is set into the shoe. The curved arms overlap one another where they join. The crest rail is secured on top of the arms. Attached to the rear rails are horizontal strips supporting the slip seat. The knee brackets are replacements. An early ink inscription on the slip seat may refer to the chair’s fabrication, possibly instructions for the upholsterer: “Please Let the Nails Come [—] he [—] otherwise the Seat will go in too hard.” A penciled note attached to the slip seat reads: “This chair was the property of Rev. Matthias Burnet Pastor of the First Congregational Society Norwalk 21 years.—died 1806 Jonathan Knight M.D.—(Our Family Physician) Bought it. He died about 1831. Father (Hezekiah Betts) bought it at Auction. It has been in our family ever since Juliette Betts Norwalk Feb. 20th 1894.”
Related examples: Downs 1952, no. 66; Campbell 1975, p. 24; Antiques 112 (October 1977), p. 629.
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.
ProvenanceMatthias Burnet (1749–1806), Jamaica, New York, and later Norwalk, Connecticut [1]; purchased by Dr. Jonathan Knight (c. 1758–1829); purchased by Hezekiah Betts (1760–1837); given to his daughter Juliette Betts (1805–1896) [2]; Malcolm Rutherford Thorpe (c. 1891–1958); [Israel Sack, New York]; purchased by Miss Ima Hogg, 1958; given to MFAH, by 1966.
[1] In 1775, Burnet became pastor of the Presbyterian Church in Jamaica, New York. A loyalist sympathizer, he eventually was forced to resign his pulpit. He later became pastor of the First Congregational Church in Norwalk, Connecticut.
[2] Charles Wyllys Betts, Thomas Betts (1618–1688) and His Descendants (New York: privately printed, 1888), pp. 85–6; and Augustus C. Golding, Ruth Comstock, and Paul Wesley Prindle, Descendants of Rev. Thomas Hanford, 1936, pp. 35–6.
Exhibition History"Petit Museum," 1988 Theta Charity Antiques Show, George R Brown Convention Center, Houston, TX, September 12–September 19, 1988 (LN:88.33)
Inscriptions, Signatures and Marks
A penciled note attached to the slip seat: This chair was the property of Rev. Matthias Burnet Paster of the First Congregational Society Norwalk 21 years. ---died 1806 Jonathan Knight M.D.---(Our Family Physician) Bought it. He died about 1831. Father [Hezekiah Betts] bought it at Auction. It has been in our family ever since Juliette Betts Norwalk Feb. 20th 1894
Cataloguing data may change with further research.
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