Incorporating turned front legs and five arched slats, these side chairs represent another variant of the Delaware Valley type (see B.66.24). Although such Delaware Valley chairs continued to be produced into the nineteenth century, particularly in the New Jersey shop of the Ware family, these chairs are early examples of the genre. Details such as the scalloped skirt and the rectangular section top of the front legs are not seen in the later examples made by the Wares. The distinctive turning of the front stretcher and the finials link these chairs to the Fussell shop.

Technical notes: Soft maple; rush (replaced).

Related examples: Forman 1980, p. 56, fig. 12, an armchair with five very similar arched slats and the same stretcher and finial turnings.

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.