PHILADELPHIA, CIRCA 1775

As indicated by the inscription Powell 1775 on one of the chair’s slip-seat frame, this pair of chairs may have been part of a set made for the Powell family of Philadelphia on the eve of the American Revolution. The current owner is descended from Christine Spencer Biddle Guilfoyle (1889-1967), whose ancestors in the Spencer and Biddle families were prominent members of eighteenth-century Philadelphia society. Through extended familial ties or social connections, the chairs may have passed from the Powell family to the Spencer-Biddle family in the late eighteenth or nineteenth century.