Lot Essay
This scroll-back chair, with double cross banisters, carved rosettes, carved vase-turned rear legs and turned front legs is a more elaborate variant to the more common single cross sabre-leg chairs of this form. This chair is nearly identical to a set of chairs made by Duncan Phyfe for William Bayard on November 21, 1807 at a cost of $12.50 per chair (Montgomery, American Furniture (New York, 1966), fig.68).
Crests carved with sheaves of wheat tied with ribbons and cross banisters embellished with carved rosettes are elements used on scroll-back chairs made by the French ébéniste, Georges Jacob in the 1780's. These decorative motifs, however, were not intergrated into American furniture until the early decade of the nineteenth century at which point craftsmen looked more to English pattern books for inspiration than to French sources, which had in point influenced the English designs. By 1810, the "Scroll Back Chair with one cross banister," which cost one pound two shillings and eight pence, was popular enough to merit an entry in the New York Revised Prices for Manufacturing Cabinet and Chair-Work. Also included in this entry were the costs for "each extra cross banister [two shillings] and each rose in the center of the cross [nine pence]" as made for this chair
Related chairs are illustrated in, Cornelius, Furniture Masterpieces of Duncan Phyfe (New York, 1923), plate I; Girl Scout Loan Exhibition (New York, 1929), figs. 777, 787; McClelland, Duncan Phyfe and the English Regency (New York, 1939), plates 156, 157, 263; Montgomery, American Furniture, fig. 689; American Furniture from Israel Sack Collection, vol.VII, 1983, p. 1971; "Sack 90th Anniversary Brochure," 1993, P4343, p. 66; Tracy, American Furniture and Decorative Arts at Boscobel (New York, 1987), fig. 5.
Crests carved with sheaves of wheat tied with ribbons and cross banisters embellished with carved rosettes are elements used on scroll-back chairs made by the French ébéniste, Georges Jacob in the 1780's. These decorative motifs, however, were not intergrated into American furniture until the early decade of the nineteenth century at which point craftsmen looked more to English pattern books for inspiration than to French sources, which had in point influenced the English designs. By 1810, the "Scroll Back Chair with one cross banister," which cost one pound two shillings and eight pence, was popular enough to merit an entry in the New York Revised Prices for Manufacturing Cabinet and Chair-Work. Also included in this entry were the costs for "each extra cross banister [two shillings] and each rose in the center of the cross [nine pence]" as made for this chair
Related chairs are illustrated in, Cornelius, Furniture Masterpieces of Duncan Phyfe (New York, 1923), plate I; Girl Scout Loan Exhibition (New York, 1929), figs. 777, 787; McClelland, Duncan Phyfe and the English Regency (New York, 1939), plates 156, 157, 263; Montgomery, American Furniture, fig. 689; American Furniture from Israel Sack Collection, vol.VII, 1983, p. 1971; "Sack 90th Anniversary Brochure," 1993, P4343, p. 66; Tracy, American Furniture and Decorative Arts at Boscobel (New York, 1987), fig. 5.