BOSTON, 1760-1785

With its asymmetric C-scroll knee carving and hairy-paw feet, this side chair illustrates some of the most sophisticated and successful carved ornament from eighteenth-century Boston. It is part of a group of approximately twenty-five examples consisting of seating forms with various back and foot designs and one card table, all of which display virtually identical knee carving. This chair, numbered VI, was originally part of a set distinguished from the rest of the group by their figure-of-eight vasiform splats and several others from the same set are known, including an example numbered VII at Winterthur Museum. Possibly representing the work of a single carver, the larger group was most likely based on imported English prototypes. Several closely related English-made chairs with beech secondary woods are known, at least two of which have early histories in the Boston area. Aside from wood use, differences separating the English- and Boston-made examples include variations in tool usage and complexity of design. As discussed by Luke Beckerdite and seen on this chair, the Boston examples display evidence of templates affixed to the C-scrolls on the knees, leaves carved with gouges and parting tools and simply modeled feet; these practices contrast with the English examples, which show evidence of templates attached in hidden areas, leaves carved with gouges only and more elaborate hairy-paw feet with tufted knuckles (Luke Beckerdite, "Carving Practices in Eighteenth-Century Boston," Old-Time New England: Essays in Memory of Benno M. Forman, vol. 72 (Boston, 1987); Mary Ellen Hayward Yehia, "Ornamental Carving on Boston Furniture of the Chippendale Style," Boston Furniture of the Eighteenth Century (Charlottesville, Virginia, 1974), pp. 201-204; Nancy E. Richards and Nancy Goyne Evans, New England Furniture at Winterthur: Queen Anne and Chippendale Periods (Winterthur, Delaware, 1997), pp. 104-106, cat. 58; for other chairs from the same original set, see Christie's, New York, 22 June 1994, lot 227; Israel Sack, Inc., American Antiques from Israel Sack Collection, vol. X, p. 2594, P6297).