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Lot Essay
As indicated by the chairs’ construction and details of the carved ornament, the set of four chairs was most likely made in the Providence shop of John Carlile & Sons. The kylix-carved splat was a popular design made by several shops in Providence and probably elsewhere in Rhode Island. While numerous examples survive today, only four, or possibly five, survive with the label of John Carlile & Sons and as the labelled chairs display consistency in construction and carving, the practices of this shop are readily identifiable. As seen on the labelled examples and the four chairs offered here, the side rails are joined to the rear stiles with through tenons, the medial stretchers are tenoned to the side stretchers and the inner corners of the front legs are chamfered. Furthermore, from the realistic crest leaf-carving with the central leaf overlapping the top bead of the crestrail to the central swags abutting the central ring and ten lobes on each side of the kylix, the carved details on the chairs offered here are very closely related to those on the labelled Carlile chairs. They differ in the execution of the rosettes and leaf-carved (rather than reeded) flaring base below the kylix, but given the overall similarities, such minor variations suggest the normal day-to-day variations in a shop with several woodworkers. For a full discussion on the Carlile labelled chairs, see Jennifer N. Johnson, catalogue entry, in Patricia E. Kane et al., Art & Industry in Early America: Rhode Island Furniture, 1650-1830 (New Haven, 2016), pp. 430-432, cat. 102.
The set of four chairs descended in the Herreshoff family of Bristol, Rhode Island and at the time of their sale in 1998, the last family owner, Halsey Chase Herreshoff, noted that the chairs were originally a set of eight owned by his great grandparents, Charles Frederick Herreshoff III (1809-1888) and Julia (Lewis) Herreshoff (1811-1901). As they were born after the chairs were made, the chairs were probably inherited from a previous generation. A likely occasion for their commission is the 1801 wedding of Herreshoff’s parents, Charles Frederick Herreshoff II (1763-1819) and Sarah Brown (1774-1846). An accomplished musician and later a celebrated scientist, she was the daughter of renowned Providence merchant John Brown (1736-1803). The couple married in Brown’s Power Street house and as a wedding gift, he gave the couple “the elegantly furnished Point Pleasant Farm homestead” in Bristol (see Richard V. Simpson, “Point Pleasant Farm,” Historic Bristol: Tales from an Old Rhode Island Seaport, 2008). With their kylix-carved splats and over-upholstered serpentine-front seats, these chairs would have been a fashionable addition to an early nineteenth-century interior and may have been ordered by John Brown to furnish this homestead. One of the chairs from the same original set was illustrated in Wendy Cooper, “The Purchase of Furniture and Furnishings by John Brown, Providence Merchant, Part II: 1788-1803,” The Magazine Antiques (April 1973), pp. 737, 738, fig. 5.
The set of four chairs descended in the Herreshoff family of Bristol, Rhode Island and at the time of their sale in 1998, the last family owner, Halsey Chase Herreshoff, noted that the chairs were originally a set of eight owned by his great grandparents, Charles Frederick Herreshoff III (1809-1888) and Julia (Lewis) Herreshoff (1811-1901). As they were born after the chairs were made, the chairs were probably inherited from a previous generation. A likely occasion for their commission is the 1801 wedding of Herreshoff’s parents, Charles Frederick Herreshoff II (1763-1819) and Sarah Brown (1774-1846). An accomplished musician and later a celebrated scientist, she was the daughter of renowned Providence merchant John Brown (1736-1803). The couple married in Brown’s Power Street house and as a wedding gift, he gave the couple “the elegantly furnished Point Pleasant Farm homestead” in Bristol (see Richard V. Simpson, “Point Pleasant Farm,” Historic Bristol: Tales from an Old Rhode Island Seaport, 2008). With their kylix-carved splats and over-upholstered serpentine-front seats, these chairs would have been a fashionable addition to an early nineteenth-century interior and may have been ordered by John Brown to furnish this homestead. One of the chairs from the same original set was illustrated in Wendy Cooper, “The Purchase of Furniture and Furnishings by John Brown, Providence Merchant, Part II: 1788-1803,” The Magazine Antiques (April 1973), pp. 737, 738, fig. 5.