A CHIPPENDALE SHELL-CARVED WALNUT SIDE CHAIR

SIGNED BY JOHN GILLINGHAM (1710-1793), PHILADELPHIA, 1760-1780

細節

A CHIPPENDALE SHELL-CARVED WALNUT SIDE CHAIR
Signed by John Gillingham (1710-1793), Philadelphia, 1760-1780
The serpentine crest centering a carved shell above a solid vasiform splat over a molded trapezoidal frame centering a carved shell, on shell-carved cabriole legs with ball-and-claw feet, the slip-seat frame with chalk inscription, "John Gillingham"
39in. high

來源

Mrs. Benjamin West, Philadelphia Sold in these Rooms, April 11, 1981, lot 478

拍品專文

The three-dimensional applied carving at crest, skirt, and knees provides a lively contrast to the relatively plainer surfaces of this chair. While the chair offered here is more elaborately carved, it shares a similar pattern to that offered as lot 556. Listed as a cabinetmaker in the 1785 Philadelphia Directory, and as a joiner in 1791 and 1793, on Arch (now Mulberry) Street, between Second and Front Streets, John Gillingham was an active member of the woodworking trade for at least five decades. William McPherson Hornor, in his Blue Book: Philadelphia Furniture (Washington, reprint, 1977) cites John Gillingham many times and as giving valuations on "fish Skins and horse Skin," ostensibly a type of exotic imported woods in 1745; Hornor also mentions a "pair high drws & one dressing table" again of "horse flesh," listed in Gillingham's own inventory, taken after his death in 1794. The uncle of the well-known cabinetmaker James Gillingham (1738-1781), Gillingham died of yellow fever in 1793 (Hornor, p.237).