NEW YORK, CIRCA 1830-1840

With broad, flat surfaces covered in flame mahogany veneer, these chairs exemplify the "pillar-and-scroll" or Greek Revival style popular in America during the 1830s. Like the Empire style, the Greek Revival drew upon French sources, notably the Restauration aesthetics of the late 1810s and 1820s. One of the earliest American references to this style is a detailed advertisement of the New York cabinetmaking firm, Joseph Meeks & Sons; in this 1833 broadside, a chair design matching that of the chairs offered here is illustrated as no. 12 (seee Marshall B. Davidson and Elizabeth Stillinger, The American Wing: The Metropoitan Museum of Art (New York, 1985), fig. 254, p. 164). Such Gondola chairs were undoubtedly made by several of New York's leading cabinetmakers. A documented suite of furniture made in 1837 by Duncan Phyfe (1768-1854) for Samuel A. Foote, a New York lawyer, includes several chairs of this design (Davidson and Stillinger, figs. 96, 98, pp. 78-79).