Lot Essay
With its lemon-shaped finials, mushroom handgrips, and elongated turnings, this chair is one of a small group associated with the Norwich, Connecticut area during the late seventeenth or early eighteenth centuries. Also distinguishing these chairs are three shaped vertical slats, cone shaped arm supports and a rather thick contruction. It is thought that these chairs may have originated from a yet to be determined single shop. For similar examples see Minor Myers, Jr exhibition catalogue, INew London County Furniture, 1640-1840, Lyman Allyn Museum, October 5-November 10, 1974, (Connecticut, 1974) p. 15, fig. 3; an example in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, illustrated in Wallace Nutting, Furniture Treasury, Volumes I and II (New York, 1928) fig. 1877, and another similar chair in the Chipstone Collection, illustrated and discussed in Roque, American Furniture at Chipstone (Madison, Wisconsin, 1984) pp. 166-167, no. 74.