Lot Essay
This turned chair is a rare survival of the work of America's earliest furniture makers. A less expensive alternative to joined or wainscot chairs, turned chairs were made in relatively greater quantities along the Massachusetts seaboard. From period accounts of Boston turners that detail large numbers of chair frames, Robert F. Trent concludes that Boston-area turners were making chairs for export as well as for local use (Trent, New England Begins: The Seventeenth Century (Boston, 1982), p. 216). Such turned chairs can be divided into three groups. Those with spindle-backs with additional spindles below the arms and seat are frequently known as "Brewster" chairs, named after a famous example thought to have been owned by William Brewster (1566/7-1644) of Plymouth Colony. Similarly termed by ownership, chairs with spindles in the back only, like the chair offered here, are known as "Carver" chairs after an example thought to have been owned by John Carver (1575/6-1621), the first Governor of Plymouth Colony (both chairs are in the collection of Pilgrim Hall Museum and illustrated in Laurence R. Pizer, Eleanor A. Driver and Alexandra B. Earle, "Furniture and Other Decorative Arts in Pilgrim Hall Museum in Plymouth, Massachusetts," Antiques (May 1985), pl. 1 and fig. 1, pp. 1112, 1114). A third type, a "slat-back" chair, employs cut slats, rather than turned elements, in the back and arms.
With urn-and-flame finials each punctuated by two ring turnings, this chair is part of small group of turned chairs made in the Boston/Charlestown area during the mid to late seventeenth century. This group includes a Brewster chair in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, two modified Brewster chairs with spindles below the arms but not below the seats in the collections of Winterthur Museum and Concord Museum, a Carver chair in the collection of the Wadsworth Atheneum and two slat-back chairs in the collections of Historic Deerfield and Ipswich Historical Society. Variations within the group consist of the shape and number of ball turnings in each post and the pattern of incised decoration. While all of these chairs have finials with double-ring turnings, the upper of which is a flattened ring, the chair offered here is the only example to have the lower ring flattened in the same manner. In contrast, the examples made in Plymouth have urn and flame finials with only one turning and do not have ball turnings within the posts.
Microanalysis of a rear post indicates that the wood is aspen-cottonwood poplar.
The related chairs cited above are illustrated in the following publications: Marshall B. Davidson and Elizabeth Stillinger, The American Wing of the Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York, 1985) fig. 132, p. 103; Benno M. Forman, American Seating Furniture 1630-1730 (New York, 1988), cat. 1, pp. 90-92; David F. Wood, The Concord Museum (Concord, Massachusetts, 1996), cat. 21, pp. 55-56; Brock Jobe and Myrna Kaye, New England Furniture (Boston, 1984), fig. 78b, p. 311; Dean A. Fales, Jr., The Furniture of Historic Deerfield (Deerfield, Massachusetts, 1981), fig. 11, p. 20; New England Begins, cat. 178, pp. 216-218.
With urn-and-flame finials each punctuated by two ring turnings, this chair is part of small group of turned chairs made in the Boston/Charlestown area during the mid to late seventeenth century. This group includes a Brewster chair in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, two modified Brewster chairs with spindles below the arms but not below the seats in the collections of Winterthur Museum and Concord Museum, a Carver chair in the collection of the Wadsworth Atheneum and two slat-back chairs in the collections of Historic Deerfield and Ipswich Historical Society. Variations within the group consist of the shape and number of ball turnings in each post and the pattern of incised decoration. While all of these chairs have finials with double-ring turnings, the upper of which is a flattened ring, the chair offered here is the only example to have the lower ring flattened in the same manner. In contrast, the examples made in Plymouth have urn and flame finials with only one turning and do not have ball turnings within the posts.
Microanalysis of a rear post indicates that the wood is aspen-cottonwood poplar.
The related chairs cited above are illustrated in the following publications: Marshall B. Davidson and Elizabeth Stillinger, The American Wing of the Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York, 1985) fig. 132, p. 103; Benno M. Forman, American Seating Furniture 1630-1730 (New York, 1988), cat. 1, pp. 90-92; David F. Wood, The Concord Museum (Concord, Massachusetts, 1996), cat. 21, pp. 55-56; Brock Jobe and Myrna Kaye, New England Furniture (Boston, 1984), fig. 78b, p. 311; Dean A. Fales, Jr., The Furniture of Historic Deerfield (Deerfield, Massachusetts, 1981), fig. 11, p. 20; New England Begins, cat. 178, pp. 216-218.