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Lot Essay
A rare survival of a set of six ball-and-claw foot chairs from eighteenth-century America, these chairs are striking for their robust stature, condition and old surface. The chairs are numbered I through VI and all but one retains its original slip seat with corresponding Roman numeral. Furthermore, the crispness of the carving, particularly in the ball-and-claw feet, is readily apparent as the chairs have an old, thin finish. For a chair with related design but lacking a shaped skirt, see Monkhouse and Michie, American Furniture in Pendleton House (Providence, 1986), p. 166, fig. 108.
At the time of their publication in The Magazine Antiques in 1979, the chairs were noted to have been made for the Billmeyer family of Germantown in about 1765 and the article referred to a bill of sale in the Germantown Historical Society (Nancy A. Iliff, "Living with Antiques: The Lindens, Washington, D.C.," The Magazine Antiques (April 1979), p. 746). This bill of sale has not been located, but, assuming such a bill existed, the chairs may have stood in the Michael Billmeyer house (fig. 1), which still stands today on Germantown Avenue. Situated near Cliveden, the house of Chief Justice Benjamin Chew, the house was built in circa 1730 and it was from this house that George Washington is thought to have commanded the patriot forces at the Battle of Germantown. The house was purchased by Michael Billmeyer (1752-1837), a noted printer, in 1789; a century later, the furniture was mentioned by Samuel Fitch Hotchkin who noted that "a part of the furniture is of the beautiful and strong patterns which delighted our ancestors, and which was honestly made for use and not for mere show," words that would aptly describe these chairs (Samuel Fitch Hotchkin, Ancient and Modern Germantown, Mount Airy and Chestnut Hill (1889), pp. 284-285; Thomas H. Shoemaker, "A List of the Inhabitants of Germantown and Chestnut Hill in 1809," Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, vol. 15, no. 3 (1891), pp. 467-468).
At the time of their publication in The Magazine Antiques in 1979, the chairs were noted to have been made for the Billmeyer family of Germantown in about 1765 and the article referred to a bill of sale in the Germantown Historical Society (Nancy A. Iliff, "Living with Antiques: The Lindens, Washington, D.C.," The Magazine Antiques (April 1979), p. 746). This bill of sale has not been located, but, assuming such a bill existed, the chairs may have stood in the Michael Billmeyer house (fig. 1), which still stands today on Germantown Avenue. Situated near Cliveden, the house of Chief Justice Benjamin Chew, the house was built in circa 1730 and it was from this house that George Washington is thought to have commanded the patriot forces at the Battle of Germantown. The house was purchased by Michael Billmeyer (1752-1837), a noted printer, in 1789; a century later, the furniture was mentioned by Samuel Fitch Hotchkin who noted that "a part of the furniture is of the beautiful and strong patterns which delighted our ancestors, and which was honestly made for use and not for mere show," words that would aptly describe these chairs (Samuel Fitch Hotchkin, Ancient and Modern Germantown, Mount Airy and Chestnut Hill (1889), pp. 284-285; Thomas H. Shoemaker, "A List of the Inhabitants of Germantown and Chestnut Hill in 1809," Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, vol. 15, no. 3 (1891), pp. 467-468).