With its ruffle-carved crest, interlacing splat, and acanthus carved knees, this chair is an adaptation from plate XIII of the 1762 edition of Chippendale's Director. These motifs were most fashionable in the third quarter of the eighteenth century in Philadelphia, used to decorate furniture, silver, and architecture, epitomizing the height of the Rococo style.

Closely related sidechairs and armchairs with varying degrees of carving and embellishments survive in great number suggesting that this may have been a most fashionable form produced in more than one Philadelphia shop. For similar examples now in the Garvan Collection, Yale University Art Gallery, see Patricia E. Kane, 300 Years of American Seating Furniture (Boston, 1976) pp. 108-111, figs. 91-93. Another example with an elaborately carved frontrail in the collection of the Winterthur Museum is illustrated and discussed in Joseph Downs, American Furniture Queen Anne and Chippendale Periods (New York, 1952) fig. 134. Two other side chairs are illustrated in Albert Sack, American Antiques from Israel Sack Collection, (New York, 1969) Vol. II, fig. 774, p. 313, and fig. 1082, p.435. Other examples sold in these Rooms January 22, 1994, sale 7823, lot 321 and June 17, 1992, sale 7492, lot 149; another example with fully carved frontrail sold at Sotheby's New York, October 23, 1994, sale 6612, lot 372.

This chair is illustrated in the sale catalogue of Francis P. Garvan, sold at Anderson Galleries, January 10, 1931, sale 3878, lot 375, described in the catalogue as by William Savery.