AMERICAN, LATE 19TH CENTURY

These chairs may have been made by the Herter Brothers firm of New York City (1865-1905). The overall rectilinear proportions and simple carved moldings are reminiscent of chairs made by Herter in the 1870s and 1880s influenced by the English designer E.W. Godwin (see Frelinghuysen, Howe, and Voorsanger, Herter Brothers: Furniture and Interiors for a Gilded Age (New York, 1994), p.170,177,194. More specifically, the stiles, headed by open-mouthed articulated and stylized lions are smiliar to those illustrated in Frelinghuysen, Howe, and Voorsanger, 1994, p.221, cat. nos. 16,17,20,31. In addition, the chairs being offered here bear original casters from the India Rubber Comb Company of New York, a firm that provided casters for Herter products (for a detail of Comb casters surviving on an armchair made by the firm for William H. Vanderbilt residence see illustration in Frelinghuysen, Howe, and Voorsanger, 1994, p.123).