Images(2)

Corner chair

Date1765-1785

OriginAmerica, Virginia, Eastern

MediumAll components are of black walnut (by microanalysis).

DimensionsOH. 33 1/2; OW (arms) 29; SD 19 1/4"

Credit LineGift of Mrs. Elizabeth Gribbel Corkran in memory of John Gribbel

Object number1969-285

DescriptionAppearance: Smoking or corner chair; square seat with hollowed front seat rails; upholstered over the rails; straight legs with stretchers between each leg; back composed of three turned columnar ballusters extended from the tops of the legs with two vasiform splats between them supporting curved arms with flat rounded arm terminals and a rounded crest rail.
Construction: The crest rail is both glued and screwed to the arm, which is made of two pieces lapped at the center. The columnar stiles are mortised into the underside of the arm, as are the splats. Typical seat frame joinery was employed, and the joints were pinned from the beginning. The present brass nail trim pattern follows the original, which is still evident on the seat rails.
Label TextThis chair has a credible tradition of ownership by Patrick Henry (1736-1799), having descended through his family at Red Hill, the Charlotte County, Virginia, plantation where he spent the last years of his life. The only seating furniture listed in Henry's estate inventory were sets of Windsor chairs and one lot containing "1 Arm & 12 plain Walnut chairs." Possibly the "1 Arm," this chair remained at Red Hill until 1910 when it was sold by Henry's descendants at auction in Philadelphia along with many of his papers and personal possessions.

Located in Virginia's southern Piedmont, Charlotte County was a rural region that supported few full-time furniture makers in the eighteenth century. Despite its simple form, it is unlikely that the Henry chair was made there. With its skillfully turned columnar arm supports and carefully executed details, the chair almost certainly was produced in one of eastern Virginia's urban centers and then shipped up-country to Charlotte. Unfortunately, the details are so typical of most chairs made in eastern Virginia that it is impossible to assign its production to any particular town, and Henry's frequent moves within the colony obscure the issue further. In the early 1770s he resided at Scotchtown, an estate in Hanover County north of the then small but growing town of Richmond. During the Revolution, Governor Henry lived in Williamsburg where he had access to that city's cabinetmakers and also to Norfolk artisan John Selden (ca. 1743-1777 or 1778), who supplied furniture for the Governor's Palace in 1776. Later, at Red Hill, Henry lived within the district whose market center was at Petersburg. Neat and plain Anglo-influenced smoking chairs more or less similar to this one were produced in all of these towns and several more besides.

The use of over-the-rail upholstery on smoking chairs is quite unusual in America and was by no means common on southern seating furniture of any form until the early national period. That the maker of this chair may have been unfamiliar with the practice is suggested by his unusual approach. Seats covered over the rail generally feature a stuffed roll along each of the exposed seat rails. To produce these rolls, or "edges" as they were sometimes called, required the specialized skills of a trained upholsterer. The maker of the Henry chair avoided that problem by shaping or "hollowing out" the tops of the front seat rails and then applying a thin layer of padding directly over the wood. No other instances of this technique are known, but it apparently worked well because the original upholstery remained on the chair until well into the twentieth century.

InscribedA silver plaque detailing the chair's ownership in the Henry family was formerly attached to the back of the crest rail and is now located in the object file.
MarkingsNone.
ProvenanceAccording to a sworn affidavit by Lucy Gray Henry Harrison of Red Hill in Charlotte Co., Va., the chair descended directly to her from Patrick Henry. She sold the chair at auction in Philadelphia in 1910 along with other Henry artifacts. Descendants of the buyer later gave it to CWF. A portrait of Patrick Henry by Thomas Sully with the same history is also in the CWF collection, acc. no. 1958-3.