NEWPORT, 1780-1800

Based on a 1765 design by London designer Robert Manwaring, the double-looped splat pattern was made by chairmakers working throughout New England and the Mid-Atlantic States. Whereas woodworkers in other areas favored shell-carved crests and cabriole legs, Newport’s chairs of this type feature crests with central cross-hatched lobes and straight, either stop-fluted or molded, legs. For a similar chair at Winterthur Museum, see Nancy E. Richards and Nancy Goyne Evans, New England Furniture at Winterthur: Queen Anne and Chippendale Periods (Winterthur, 1997), pp. 82-83, cat. 47.