Chippendale Carved Mahogany Side Chair

Object Details

Object Essay

As part of the search for nonclassical sources for ornament during the rococo era, 18th-century English architects and artisans appropriated motifs from medieval architecture, particularly pointed arches, window tracery, and quatrefoils. Many of Thomas Chippendale’s designs for chair backs in the Director combined these Gothic forms with lavish foliate ornament. Here, the splat exhibits a similar fusion of the Gothic and rococo in the leaf and ruffle carving around the quatrefoil and at the top of the pointed arch.

This kind of Gothic splat, with paired C-scrolls defining its outside edges, was used on a set of chairs made in 1775 by Thomas Tufft (ca. 1745–1788) for Richard Edwards (1744–1799) of Lumberton, New Jersey.^{1_{Hornor 1935, pl. 161. The documentation connecting these chairs to Tufft was published by Williams 1948, 246–47. See also Christie’s, New York, Sale 6400A, May 27, 1987, Lot 201.}} Tufft, who was active in Philadelphia from at least 1772 to 1787, produced cabriole legs with slender knees, delicate carving, and C-scroll brackets similar to those on the chair in the Collection.^{2_{These features appear on a side chair labeled by Tufft at Winterthur (Downs 1952, no. 134) and a labeled dressing table at the Philadelphia Museum of Art (Woodhouse, 292–93).}} The slender proportions, diminutive size, and delicate carving of this chair suggest a date contemporary with Tufft’s work, although the quality of its carving is inferior. Another side chair with the same kind of splat was published by Hornor as “bearing the marking of Samuel Walton,” who was cited as a joiner on the tax lists of 1783 and 1786.^{3_{Hornor 1935, 188, 321, 326, and pl. 274.}}

David L. Barquist

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.