Side chair

Date1780-1790

MediumMahogany and yellow pine.

DimensionsOH. 38 3/8; OW. 20; SD. 16 13/16.

Credit LineMuseum Purchase

Object number1986-59

DescriptionAppearance: arched crest rail with beaded upper and lower front edges; vasiform splat with four vertical piercings divided midway by alternating cove and rounded elements above a pierced plinth; stiles with rounded backs and beaded inner and outer front edges; molded shoe; trapezoidal slipseat; front and side seat rails with rounded upper outer edges; four straight legs with chamfered inner edges; rear legs taper inward and rake back; box stretcher assembly, sides below back and front.

Construction: The shoe and rear seat rail are not integral, and there have never been corner blocks in the seat. Joints between the seat rails and the legs are secured with square pins, though joints for the stretchers and crest rail are not pinned. A fine, incised bead defines the inner and outer edges of the crest rail and the stiles above the seat rails. The tops of the seat rails are not molded. The right rear stile was pieced out at the bottom, probably during the chair's original construction.

Materials: Mahogany chair frame; yellow pine slip-seat frame.
Label TextNeoclassical ornamentation first appeared on eastern Virginia furniture during the early 1770s, but widespread acceptance of the new fashion was slow in coming because of interruptions to trade and manufacturing during the Revolution. In the years just after the war, neoclassicism remained a somewhat tentative force in Virginia. Consequently, artisans in the new commonwealth often produced objects like this chair, which bears a few neoclassical elements but is still largely of late colonial form. Note, for instance, that the front legs are tapered, but to so slight a degree that the detail is barely visible. Full-fledged neoclassical furniture would not be made in Virginia until the mid-1790s.

This chair has a history in the town of Suffolk, but it resembles seating furniture recorded in Alexandria, Fredericksburg, Norfolk, and Philadelphia. That one design was so widely dispersed probably reflects the increasing mobility of cabinetmakers and other tradesmen in post-Revolutionary America. Irish immigrant James McCormick (d. 1791) is one example. Apparently in search of more lucrative opportunities, McCormick moved his cabinet operation from Baltimore to Alexandria, then to Norfolk, and finally to Petersburg, all within the five years just prior to his death. English-trained cabinetmaker William Little (1775-1848) worked in Norfolk, Virginia, and Charleston, South Carolina, before settling at Sneedsborough, North Carolina, in 1800. Though their tenures were often brief, these migratory craftsmen and others like them absorbed and passed on design influences in most of the places they worked.

The basic pattern for this chair originated not in America but in Britain, a fashion force that continued to make itself felt in Virginia and other coastal states long after political independence was won. Designs for household furniture were still being transmitted across the Atlantic in the published pattern books of the day and by way of British craftsmen like McCormick and Little, who continued to emigrate to the former colonies in some numbers.

InscribedNone.
MarkingsThe Roman numeral "V" is chiseled into both the front seat rail rabbet and the slip-seat frame.
ProvenanceThe chair was acquired from the Lodge of the Sinai 18, Order of the Eastern Star, in Suffolk, Va., where it had been since at least the 1930s