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Photo: Courtesy Historic New England, Boston, 1976.129
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Easy chair

Object number

RIF836

Maker

Maker Unknown

Dimensions

46 3/8 × 34 × 21 11/16 in. (117.793 × 86.36 × 55.086 cm) Seat height: 12 3/4 in. (32.385 cm)

Date

1760–75

Current location

Historic New England (www.historicnewengland.com), formerly Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities

Geography

Made in Massachusetts, or made in Rhode Island
(view a map of Rhode Island)

Medium

Mahogany (front legs and side and medial stretchers); hard maple (rear legs and rear stretchers); ash (arms); white pine (cone-shaped arm supports); soft maple (all other secondary wood)

Provenance

Mary Thacher, Massachusetts; by descent to Guido R. Perera (1902–1999), Boston; given to the Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities (now Historic New England), Boston, 1976

Associated names

Mary Thacher
Guido R. Perera

Construction

The stiles and the rear legs are of one piece. The side seat rails are tenoned into the front seat rail. A dovetail-shaped extension of each front leg fits into a slot in the front seat rail. An ash wedge set through the dovetail tightens the joint. The stiles are tenoned into the crest rail. The wings are dovetailed and nailed to the stiles and crest. Source: Brock Jobe and Myrna Kaye,New England Furniture: The Colonial Era (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1984), 370.

Bibliography

Brock Jobe and Myrna Kaye, New England Furniture: The Colonial Era (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1984), 368–370, no. 103, ill.