Lot Essay
Branded "A.STEEL" on the underside of the seat, this chair was made by Anthony Steel, a chairmaker working in Philadelphia. Listed in the city directories as a "windsor chairmaker" from 1791 to 1817, he died leaving an estate with large quantities of windsor chair parts (Evans, p.140). Several known chairs bearing his stamp indicate that Steel worked in a variety of styles, from bow-back chairs to fancy tablet-back chairs, recorded in the Winterthur Library Decorative Arts Photographic Collection. A stamped side chair in the collection of Independence National Historic Park, Philadelphia is closely related to this armchair, with a molded crestrail, nine-spindle back, tripartite bamboo-simulated legs, and a double-swelled medial stretcher (Winterthur Library: Decorative Arts Photographic Collection, no. 65. 3031).