AMERICAN, 19TH CENTURY

Acquired by Mrs. Blair as a mate to the chair in the preceding lot, this upholstered open armchair represents a nineteenth-century replica of the earlier model. Its differences were noted by Mrs. Blair, who recorded in her files that this chair was of heavier construction and had pine and cherry secondary woods. Almost ten years after she purchased this chair, Henry Francis du Pont bought five examples from the Tibbits (or Tibbets) family of New York City (and later another two) that are closely related (fig. 1). For a number of years, these chairs were believed to be authentic and were displayed prominently in the Museum's Queen Anne Dining Room (see Joseph Downs, American Furniture: Queen Anne and Chippendale Periods (New York, 1952), cat. 17; the chairs are made of mahogany, incorrectly identified by Downs as walnut, as noted in the Curatorial Files, Winterthur Museum, acc. no. 63.613.1-7). It is only recently that the chairs have been re-attributed to the nineteenth century. As uncovered by Tara Gleason Chircida and Mark Anderson, the chairs display construction features inconsistent with eighteenth-century practices, such as sharply tooled seat frames and doweled legs, that are also seen on this chair (see Curatorial Files, op. cit., and Mark Anderson, "Uncovering the Secrets of the Queen Anne Dining Room," Winterthur Magazine (Summer 1999), pp. 34-35). Another chair that also came from the Tibbits family, but a branch from Hoosick Falls, New York, appears to be from the same set (Israel Sack, Inc., advertisement, The Magazine Antiques (April 1977), inside front cover).