Object Details
Object Essay
Although the overall form of this chair suggests an 18th-century design, the ornamentation of the delicately cut and carved splat represents a later, neoclassical vocabulary. The lightly carved, pendant bellflowers of the splat are found in America only on Rhode Island examples. Most frequently, the upper portion of the splat features a kylix urn centered in an oval with swags bisecting the oval. The urn motif in an oval is typically associated with both Providence and Salem chairmaking of the late 18th and early 19th centuries.
This variation on the pendant bellflower splat is extremely rare and does not appear in the popular contemporary English design sources published by George Hepplewhite (1788) and Thomas Sheraton (1791–1793 and 1803). Charles F. Montgomery has noted, however, that the shape of the back is shown in the 1802 London Chair-Maker’s and Carver’s Book of Prices for Workmanship, where it is called a “pedestal back.”1Montgomery 1966, 94–95, fig. 42. Presumably, chairs of this form must have a more common, direct English precedent, and John T. Kirk has cited an indirectly related English example.2Kirk 1982, 285, fig. 1045.
The pendant bellflower is frequently used as inlaid ornament on Rhode Island neoclassical furniture, so this oversized adaptation is not surprising. The carved bellflower in the rear splat, however, appears to be a genuine American innovation. This chair differs from the variety exhibiting kylix urns, as the front and rear seat rails are curved, or saddle-shaped, a feature that in fact may have been borrowed from an English relation.
Wendy A. Cooper
Excerpted from Clement E. Conger, et al. Treasures of State: Fine and Decorative Arts in the Diplomatic Reception Rooms of the U.S. Department of State. New York: H.N. Abrams, 1991.