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Lot Essay
Identical in form and carved ornament to signed examples, this pair of chairs appears to be part of a set made by Gilbert Ash (1717-1785) for the Van Rensselaer family of Albany, New York. One chair, now in the collections of Winterthur Museum bears a pencilled inscription on the inside of the back rail reading, "Made by Gilbert Ash in wall Stre[?]t R[?] nie[?] Sold [G?]ai[l?] new york" (illustration and transcription in Blackburn, "Gilbert Ash inscriptions reconsidered," Antiques (February 1983), p. 428). First discovered in 1932, the inscription was subsequently doubted by several scholars but after comparing the penmanship to Ash's signature on period documents re-instated as authentic by Roderic H. Blackburn in the article cited above. Two other chairs from the set are in the Albany Institute of History and Art (Blackburn, p. 429, figs. 2, 2a, 2b).
Linking extant craftsmanship with maker and owner, this set of chairs is a rare and important document of New York's Chippendale era. Acquired separately, the chair at Winterthur Museum and the pair at the Albany Institute were owned in the twentieth century by members of the Van Rensselaer family who claimed they had never been out of the family (Blackburn, pp. 428-429). Furthermore, the slip-seat frame of one of chairs offered here bears an inscription in a later hand that appears to read VVR--possibly a reference to the Van Rensselaer family.
Linking extant craftsmanship with maker and owner, this set of chairs is a rare and important document of New York's Chippendale era. Acquired separately, the chair at Winterthur Museum and the pair at the Albany Institute were owned in the twentieth century by members of the Van Rensselaer family who claimed they had never been out of the family (Blackburn, pp. 428-429). Furthermore, the slip-seat frame of one of chairs offered here bears an inscription in a later hand that appears to read VVR--possibly a reference to the Van Rensselaer family.