Images(6)

Side chair

Date1795-1815

OriginAmerica, Massachusetts, Salem

MediumMahogany and beech

DimensionsOH: 37 1/2"; OW: 21 1/2"; OD: 20 1/2"; SD: 18 1/4"

Credit LineGift of Maryland Historical Society

Object number2018-206

DescriptionSide chair with elliptical crest rail containing a tablet in the central portion. The tablet is carved with two swags on a punchwork background. The back of the chair is comprised of three interlaced gothic arches emenating from a stay rail which form the splat, surrounded by a molded edge that frames the back of the chair. A serpentine-shaped front seat with bowed sides rest on top of plain, square tapered front legs and tapered and canted back legs.
Label TextOriginally owned in Prince George County, Maryland, this chair and its mates were produced about 450 miles away in Salem, Massachusetts. Whether the chairs were bespoke (specifically ordered) or part of a venture cargo sent on speculation to southern ports is not known, but customers obtained fashionable northern furniture using both methods. The unidentified Salem cabinetmaker who produced this chair must have been familiar with plate 9 in George Hepplewhite’s A Cabinet-Maker and Upholsterer’s Guide, which illustrates the same design. He may have owed his own copy or had access to one of the copies owned by the Sanderson family or another cabinetmaker in Salem.
ProvenanceThis chair and a number of other objects were used at "Poplar Hill," also known as "His Lordship's Kindness," a 1786 mansion in Prince George's County, Maryland. The house (and apparently the contents) descended directly from the builder, Robert Darnall, to his nephew, Robert Sewell, to his son, Robert Darnall Sewell, to his nieces, Susan and Ellen Daingerfield in 1853. The latter, (later Mrs. John Strode Barbour) bequeathed the furnishings to her sister-in-law, Virginia Peyton Daingerfield (1854-1926) in 1912. Mrs. Barbour left the materials to her son and daughter-in-law, Mr. and Mrs. Philp Barton Key Daingerfield. Mrs. Daingerfield (d. 1942) bequeathed to the Maryland Historical Society "furniture of the Daingerfeld, Darnall, and Sewell families." The Maryland Historical Societey gifted this chair to CWF in 2018 since it owned others from the same suite.

Family tradition stated that the chairs were given to a member of the family "by George Washington's brother." Since all of George Washington's brothers died before the chair was made, the tradition is unlikely.