NORWICH OR HARTFORD AREA, CONNECTICUT, 1740-1760

Like the closely related pair of chairs in the preceding lot, these side chair exemplify the restrained elegance of New England's Queen Anne aesthetic. Chairs of this design, with distinctive spurs on the splats, chamfered rear legs and three-part stretchers, have been associated with Norwich, Connecticut, but recent research suggests the Hartford, Connecticut area is also a possible origin. One side chair in this group has a history in the Lyman family, some of whom were living in Hartford, Connecticut in the early nineteenth century. An armchair probably from the same set as the chair in this lot was owned in Norwich in 1961 by William Welles Lyman (1888-1969), who was the great grandson of Normand Lyman (1795-1865), one of the early owners of the chair offered here. See Nancy Goyne Evans, catalogue entry, New England Furniture at Winterthur: The Queen Anne and Chippendale Periods (Winterthur, 1997), pp. 39-40; Ada R. Chase, "History in Towns: Norwich, Connecticut," The Magazine Antiques (June 1961), p. 562.