Side Chair

Date1770-1790

MediumMahogany and yellow pine.

DimensionsOH. 36 7/8; OW. 20 1/2; SD. 17 5/8.

Credit LineMuseum Purchase

Object number1990-202

DescriptionConstruction: The base of the splat is secured with three tenons instead of the usual one. Most of the leg and rail joints are fastened with small squared pins. No evidence of original blocking can be found. The shoe and rear seat rail are two separate units.

Materials: Mahogany chair frame; yellow pine slip-seat frame.
Label TextAlthough made in Petersburg, Virginia, this chair was found in Halifax County, North Carolina, a once rural area that traded regularly with Petersburg during the early national period. MESDA has recorded a number of chairs with exactly the same idiosyncratic strapwork splat, all with histories in the Petersburg market sphere. Among them are an armchair with carved rosettes at the arm terminals (MESDA research file 6162) and a side chair executed without a rear stretcher, a popular Petersburg format (MESDA research file 6163). While chairs of a similar pattern were produced in Norfolk and Portsmouth, Virginia (MESDA research file 3836), they can be distinguished from the Petersburg models by the pendants above the figure-eight elements in their splats. The Norfolk-Portsmouth chairs also have triple-arched crest rails with pointed ears and small projections around their central arches, both features associated with other chair patterns from that area.

The structural and aesthetic similarities between furniture made in Petersburg and that from Norfolk reflect the considerable cultural and economic ties that existed between the two cities from the mid-eighteenth century until the 1840s. During all of that period, Norfolk was Virginia's largest urban center and its principal international port. It also served as a vital trade intermediary for Petersburg, Richmond, Fredericksburg, and other agricultural processing centers along the fall line. These connections promoted the movement of Norfolk craft traditions upriver, especially to Petersburg.

Facilitating such cultural transfusions were men like cabinetmaker John Selden (d. 1778), who trained in Norfolk during the 1750s and later worked there until losing his shop during the wartime destruction of the city in 1776. That same year Selden relocated to the Petersburg suburb of Blandford, bringing with him his Anglo-influenced Norfolk style. Typical of his British approach to cabinetmaking is clothespress CWF L1976-121, produced in Norfolk just before Selden departed for Blandford. Selden's legacy in the Petersburg area continued with the arrival of John McCloud, one of his Norfolk-trained apprentices, who opened a cabinetmaking shop in Blandford after the Revolutionary War.
InscribedNone.
Markings"XI" is chiseled into the front seat rail rabbet; "I" is cut into the slip-seat frame.
ProvenanceThe chair was found in an early house in Halifax Co., N. C., and has an oral tradition of ownership by William R. Davie (1756-1820), a resident of that county between 1782 and 1797. It was purchased by CWF in 1990 from Richmond, Va., antiques dealer Sumpter Priddy III.