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拍品专文
Designed with individualistic flare and surviving in impeccable condition, this chair and its mate in the following lot are outstanding examples of Philadelphia chair making during the mid-eighteenth century. The chairs have long been associated with the renowned craftsman William Savery (1722-1787), a possible attribution that is supported by evidence from the chairs and the genealogical evidence from other chairs from the same set. Enhancing their appeal, both retain an old and possibly original surface and rush seats, which still bear remnants of rolled sea grass stuffing, a period technique for creating a plusher seat.
The chairs’ yoke crests, lambrequin-carved knees and trifid feet all exemplify the regional preferences of Philadelphia chair makers at this time. Other details, however, reveal the handiwork of an accomplished craftsman with a penchant for the idiosyncratic. These unusual features include the waisted shaping between the inverted baluster forms on the lower splat and side stretchers that unlike the norm, have inner edges with a curved profile. Supporting the attribution to Savery, the execution of the lambrequins and trifid feet compare favorably with those seen on a side chair labelled by Savery and now at Colonial Williamsburg (acc. no. 1958-616,1).
Comprising a single example at the Henry Ford Museum (fig. 1) and a pair illustrated in 1924 (fig. 2), at least three other chairs from the same set are known. Those represented in fig. 2 were owned in 1924 by “T. W. Scattergood,” who has been identified as Thomas Walter Scattergood (1874-1963), a great great grandson of William Savery. As Savery married in 1746, it is unlikely he would have been running his own shop long before this time, so if he did make these chairs, they were undoubtedly executed in the late 1740s or early 1750s. While the family ties and the comparison with the Williamsburg chair above point toward a Savery attribution, Scattergood was also a direct descendant of other Philadelphia woodworkers, including John Head, Sr. (1688-1754) and Stephen Armitt (1705-1751), so may have inherited these chairs from another of the illustrious woodworkers in his ancestry. For genealogical information on the Savery-Scattergood family, see A. W. Savary, A Genealogical and Biographical Record of the Savery Families (Boston, 1893), pp. 139-143.
The chairs’ yoke crests, lambrequin-carved knees and trifid feet all exemplify the regional preferences of Philadelphia chair makers at this time. Other details, however, reveal the handiwork of an accomplished craftsman with a penchant for the idiosyncratic. These unusual features include the waisted shaping between the inverted baluster forms on the lower splat and side stretchers that unlike the norm, have inner edges with a curved profile. Supporting the attribution to Savery, the execution of the lambrequins and trifid feet compare favorably with those seen on a side chair labelled by Savery and now at Colonial Williamsburg (acc. no. 1958-616,1).
Comprising a single example at the Henry Ford Museum (fig. 1) and a pair illustrated in 1924 (fig. 2), at least three other chairs from the same set are known. Those represented in fig. 2 were owned in 1924 by “T. W. Scattergood,” who has been identified as Thomas Walter Scattergood (1874-1963), a great great grandson of William Savery. As Savery married in 1746, it is unlikely he would have been running his own shop long before this time, so if he did make these chairs, they were undoubtedly executed in the late 1740s or early 1750s. While the family ties and the comparison with the Williamsburg chair above point toward a Savery attribution, Scattergood was also a direct descendant of other Philadelphia woodworkers, including John Head, Sr. (1688-1754) and Stephen Armitt (1705-1751), so may have inherited these chairs from another of the illustrious woodworkers in his ancestry. For genealogical information on the Savery-Scattergood family, see A. W. Savary, A Genealogical and Biographical Record of the Savery Families (Boston, 1893), pp. 139-143.