NORWICH AREA, CONNECTICUT, 1680-1720

This chair is one of a small group associated with the Norwich, Connecticut area during the late seventeenth or early eighteenth centuries. Thought to have come from the same but yet to be identified shop, these chairs are distinguished by lemon shaped finials, mushroom handgrips and elongated turnings, also with thre shaped vertical slats, cone shaped arm supports and a thick construction. For similar examples see Minor Myers, Jr., New London County Furniture, 1640-1840 (New London, Connecticut, 1974) p. 15, fig. 3; an example in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, illustrated in Wallace Nutting, Furniture Treasury, Volumes I and II (New York, 1928) fig. 1877, and another similar chair in the Chipstone Collection, illustrated and discussed in Roque, American Furniture at Chipstone (Madison, Wisconsin, 1984) pp. 166-167, no. 74.