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Photo: Courtesy The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1988.93
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Side chair

Object number

RIF4443

Maker

Maker Unknown

Dimensions

Height: 40 1/2 in. (102.87 cm) Width, seat: 21 3/8 in. (54.29 cm) Depth, seat: 18 1/8 in. (46.04 cm)

Date

1790–1810

Current location

The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Geography

Made in Providence, Rhode Island
(view a map of Rhode Island)

Medium

Mahogany (primary); maple (front and rear seat rails and diagonal corner braces); beech (side seat rails)

Marks

None

Inscriptions

Double horizontal lines, incised on the inside surfaces of the rear legs

Provenance

Mr. and Mrs. Anthony L. Gellar; given to The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1988

Associated names

Mrs. Anthony L. Gellar
Anthony L. Geller

Construction

The arched serpentine crest rail is molded on the front; its back edge is rounded on top, has a noticeable ridge at its midpoint, and is flat below. Tenoned into the crest?s underside is a single-piece openwork splat containing an ellipse centering a reeded kylix from which spring carved feathers and swags, above incurvate uprights enclosing pendant foliage. It is tenoned into the top of rear seat rail, to which the molded shoe (behind which the splat sits) is fixed with wood-filled fasteners. There is a narrow slot below the bottom of the shoe?s front edge in the top of the rear seat rail. Tenoned and wood-pinned to the ends of the crest rail are serpentine leg/stiles molded in front, rounded in back to the top of the seat frame, below which they are square and rearward as well as inward raking. The rear seat rail is tenoned and wood-pinned to the leg-stiles. The side seat rails are tenoned and double-wood-pinned to the leg/stiles and the front legs. The center of the front rail is bowed on its inner and outer faces; its ends are straight. It is tenoned and single-wood-pinned to the front legs which are molded on their outside faces and chamfered on their inside corner. The outside half of each front leg top slopes upward. In each corner of the seat frame is a diagonal brace set into grooves in contiguous rails. The rear stretcher is shy of the rear faces of the back legs into which it is tenoned. The side stretchers are flush with the outside faces of the rear and front legs to which they are tenoned and nailed. The medial stretcher is dovetailed into the underside of the side stretchers. Examined by P. E. Kane and J. N. Johnson, October 24, 2014; notes compiled by T. B. Lloyd.

See also

Bibliography

Morrison H. Heckscher, "American Furniture and the Art of Connoisseurship," Antiques 153, no. 5 (May 1998): 728–729, pl. XIII, XV.