Another type of chair traditionally ascribed to Newport incorporates S-curved stiles with carved scallop shells on the knees and crest rail. Surprisingly, this attribution is based largely on the shells’ similarities with those that ornament Newport's distinctive case furniture. While more than fifty chairs matching this general description are recorded, there is only one documented set, believed to have been supplied to Providence merchant Moses Brown by the Newport cabinetmaker John Goddard. Besides the Goddard-Brown chairs, no examples of the so-called Newport type with a Rhode Island provenance are known. However, several chairs with histories in Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Maine, support an attribution to the Boston area.

Technical notes: No original secondary woods remain. The construction is typical of New England chairs from this period (see B.57.75). The stiles’ exterior curve is attached to the corresponding interior segment. The interior seat rail of B.58.141.1 is incised I, and of B.58.141.2, V.

Related examples:  Sack 1950, p. 23; Jobe and Kaye 1984, pp. 358–60, no. 99; Rodriguez Roque 1984, pp. 116-17, no. 49; Heckscher 1985, pp. 42–43, no. 7.

Book excerpt: Warren, David B., 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.