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Photo: Courtesy Rhode Island Furniture Archive
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Roundabout chair

Object number

RIF6559

Maker

Maker Unknown

Dimensions

30 1/2 × 25 × 25 in. (77.5 × 63.5 × 63.5 cm) Seat height: 15 1/2 in. (39.4 cm)

Date

1740–1760

Current location

Private Collection

Geography

Probably made in Rhode Island
(view a map of Rhode Island)

Medium

Maple (primary); ash (seat and frame)

Marks

None

Inscriptions

None

Provenance

Nathan Liverant and Son, Colchester, Connecticut; sold to E. Martin Wunsch, New York; sold to Nathan Liverant and Son, Colchester, Connecticut; sold to a private collector

Associated names

Nathan Liverant and Son
E. Martin Wunsch

Construction

The semi-circular top rail consists of three segmented pieces. The joints between them are filled with narrow strips of wood. The segmental back rest with incurvate ends is fixed to the top of the rail by multiple rosehead nails through its underside. Two vasiform splats are tenoned into the underside of the top rail and the tops of the rear seat rails, whose flat, double-beaded "shoes" are strips of wood held on with wood-filled fasteners. The tops of the three leg-stiles are doweled into the underside of the top rail and wood-pinned through its back edge. The seat rails are tenoned and wood-pinned to the rectilinear blocks at the leg/stiles? midpoints. Each rear corner of the frame contains a diagonal brace to support the slip seat, let into adjacent seat rails and fixed with rosehead nails into those rails through its outer face. A two-part turned and half-lapped x-form stretcher joins the four turned legs at their lower blocked sections, whose inside corners are chamfered to receive them. The ends of the stretchers are doweled and wood-pinned. The block atop the front cabriole leg is rabbeted to create a supporting shelf for the slip seat?s forward corner. The rear leg/stiles end in turned feet, the front leg in a shod pad foot. Examined by P.E. Kane and J.N. Johnson, August 22, 2013; notes compiled by T.B. Lloyd.

See also