拍品專文
Send 'six dozen black walnut chairs with leather seats' wrote a ship captain from the Azores to a Portsmouth, New Hampshire merchant in 1768. This request most likely describes chairs with vertical pierced splats which at the time were the most popular chair form produced in Portsmouth for both export and local markets. The third most active furniture venture cargo port in the colonies in the third quarter of the eighteenth century, Portsmouth exported furniture overseas and to southern ports such as Virginia, where these chairs were found along with similar chairs now in the collection of Colonial Williamsburg (Jobe, ed., Portsmouth Furniture (SPNEA, 1993), p. 55).
Two of a set of three sidechairs owned in Virginia, these chairs are important not only for their place in the coastal venture cargo network, but also because they represent a common Portsmouth chair form that retain their original leather over-the-rail upholstery and under-upholstery (the single chair is now in the collection of Winterthur Museum).
Based upon English designs such as the drawings of John Linnell (d. 1796) (see illustration) and Thomas Chippendale, chairs with vertical pierced splats were common in England and the colonies (A Miscellaneous Collection of Designs, published posthumously (London, 1800); The Cabinet-Maker's and Upholsterer's Director (London, 1762), No. XVI). Influenced either through designs, imports or the British craftsmen who immigrated to Portsmouth, this splat pattern was traditionally combined with crests in the Chinese manner, one of the more stylish rococo design influences of the period. Chairs with this back pattern were also made in Rhode Island, Boston, and Connecticut.
Most often made from either walnut or birch, this pair of chairs is unusual in that they are made of cherrywood, used in another instance for the seat rails of an identical walnut sidechair originally owned by Benjamin Chadbourne of South Berwick, Maine. Other than the selection of wood, the features of this pair are typical of Portsmouth examples: the legs are chamfered on the inner edge of each leg and on the outer edge of the rear legs below the stretcher, a feature which visually kicks back the heel; and stretchers are beaded on the outer edge and arranged in a box formation rather than with a more common central medial stretcher.
The use of over-the-rail upholstery was the preferred method of chair coverings in eighteenth-century Portsmouth. Chairs were often adorned with a single row of brass nails along the lower edge of the seat rails with a string of three of four vertical nails at each front corner as seen on this page. The illustration of the Linnell drawing depicts a chair frame made for over-the-rail upholstery. The upper portion of the each front leg is extended to cradle a roll of marsh grass intended to soften the front seat rail. Tacked to the rails before the roll is placed between the peaks are strips of girt webbing, in this instance, two 2" interwoven strips upon which a layer of linen sackcloth is placed. Marsh grass is used as the stuffing and curled hair may be placed above the grass to add resiliency over which either another layer of linen was placed before the leather or simply the single piece of leather was laid down and tacked and trimmed in place. Two other Portsmouth chairs with pierced backs and Chinese crests retain their original leather over-upholstery with single row brass nails: one is branded O. Briard for merchant, Oliver Briard and the other is branded I. Salter for merchant John Salter (New Hampshire Historical Society, see Jobe, p. 55, fig. 41; Kaye, 'Marked Portsmouth Furniture,' Magazine Antiques (May, 1978): 1103, fig. 6).
Related over-the-rail chairs with Portsmouth histories include a pair at the Wentworth-Coolidge Mansion in Newcastle originally owned by the Wentworth or Cushing family; a pair that descended in the John Langdon family now in the collection of the Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities (Jobe & Kaye, New England Furniture (Boston, 1986), no 126); a set of four sidechairs at the Woodman Institute that descended in a Dover family; and an armchiar owned by Governor Wentworth of New Hampshire (Jobe, fig. 84).
Two of a set of three sidechairs owned in Virginia, these chairs are important not only for their place in the coastal venture cargo network, but also because they represent a common Portsmouth chair form that retain their original leather over-the-rail upholstery and under-upholstery (the single chair is now in the collection of Winterthur Museum).
Based upon English designs such as the drawings of John Linnell (d. 1796) (see illustration) and Thomas Chippendale, chairs with vertical pierced splats were common in England and the colonies (A Miscellaneous Collection of Designs, published posthumously (London, 1800); The Cabinet-Maker's and Upholsterer's Director (London, 1762), No. XVI). Influenced either through designs, imports or the British craftsmen who immigrated to Portsmouth, this splat pattern was traditionally combined with crests in the Chinese manner, one of the more stylish rococo design influences of the period. Chairs with this back pattern were also made in Rhode Island, Boston, and Connecticut.
Most often made from either walnut or birch, this pair of chairs is unusual in that they are made of cherrywood, used in another instance for the seat rails of an identical walnut sidechair originally owned by Benjamin Chadbourne of South Berwick, Maine. Other than the selection of wood, the features of this pair are typical of Portsmouth examples: the legs are chamfered on the inner edge of each leg and on the outer edge of the rear legs below the stretcher, a feature which visually kicks back the heel; and stretchers are beaded on the outer edge and arranged in a box formation rather than with a more common central medial stretcher.
The use of over-the-rail upholstery was the preferred method of chair coverings in eighteenth-century Portsmouth. Chairs were often adorned with a single row of brass nails along the lower edge of the seat rails with a string of three of four vertical nails at each front corner as seen on this page. The illustration of the Linnell drawing depicts a chair frame made for over-the-rail upholstery. The upper portion of the each front leg is extended to cradle a roll of marsh grass intended to soften the front seat rail. Tacked to the rails before the roll is placed between the peaks are strips of girt webbing, in this instance, two 2" interwoven strips upon which a layer of linen sackcloth is placed. Marsh grass is used as the stuffing and curled hair may be placed above the grass to add resiliency over which either another layer of linen was placed before the leather or simply the single piece of leather was laid down and tacked and trimmed in place. Two other Portsmouth chairs with pierced backs and Chinese crests retain their original leather over-upholstery with single row brass nails: one is branded O. Briard for merchant, Oliver Briard and the other is branded I. Salter for merchant John Salter (New Hampshire Historical Society, see Jobe, p. 55, fig. 41; Kaye, 'Marked Portsmouth Furniture,' Magazine Antiques (May, 1978): 1103, fig. 6).
Related over-the-rail chairs with Portsmouth histories include a pair at the Wentworth-Coolidge Mansion in Newcastle originally owned by the Wentworth or Cushing family; a pair that descended in the John Langdon family now in the collection of the Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities (Jobe & Kaye, New England Furniture (Boston, 1986), no 126); a set of four sidechairs at the Woodman Institute that descended in a Dover family; and an armchiar owned by Governor Wentworth of New Hampshire (Jobe, fig. 84).