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Photo: Courtesy Historic Deerfield Inc., HD 2015 Amanda Merullo
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Roundabout chair

Object number

RIF1309

Maker

(needlework) Mary Wright Alsop, American, 1740–1829

Dimensions

H × W × D (diag.): 32 11/16 × 19 1/8 × 26 1/8 in. (83.026 × 48.578 × 66.358 cm)

Date

1757

Current location

Historic Deerfield, Inc.

Geography

Made in Newport, Rhode Island, or made in Middletown, Connecticut
(view a map of Rhode Island)

Medium

Walnut (primary); pine (slip seat frame)

Marks

Inscribed "MOLLY WRIGHT" in brown wool tent stitches at right angles at rear slip seat. The names are worked in rectangular blocks. Source: Glee Krueger, "A Middletown Cameo: Mary Wright Alsop and Her Needlework," The Connecticut Historical Society 52, Summer/Fall 1987 (Hartford, Conn.: The Connecticut Historical Society, 1987): 157.

Inscriptions

Dated "1757" in ink numerals on seat bottom. Source: Glee Krueger, "A Middletown Cameo: Mary Wright Alsop and Her Needlework," The Connecticut Historical Society 52, Summer/Fall 1987 (Hartford, Conn.: The Connecticut Historical Society, 1987): 157.

Provenance

Historic Deerfield, Inc., Massachusetts, by 1992

Bibliography

Dean A. Fales, Jr., The Furniture of Historic Deerfield (New York: E. P. Dutton and Company, 1976), 38, fig. 64.
Glee Krueger, "A Middletown Cameo: Mary Wright Alsop and Her Needlework," The Connecticut Historical Society Bulletin 52, nos.3–4 (Summer/Fall 1987): 154–155, fig. 7.
Iona W. Lincoln, "Flowers in the Decorative Arts," Antiques and the Arts Weekly (April 19, 1985): 1, 60–63, unnumbered ill. p.63, ill.
Philip Zea, "Pursuing Refinement in Rural New England 1750–1850," Historic Deerfield, Inc. (1998): 64–65, fig. 93.
"Current and Coming," Antiques 154, no. 4 (October 1998): 392, ill.
Elizabeth Stillinger, Historic Deerfield (New York: Dutton Studio Books, 1992), 76, ill.