Side Chair

Date1750-1760

MediumBlack walnut and yellow pine

DimensionsOH: 37 ¾"; OW: 21 ½"; OD: 18"

Credit LineMuseum Purchase, The Sara and Fred Hoyt Furniture Fund

Object number2010-26

DescriptionAppearance: Side chair with a crest rail, lobed at the ears, and with three upswept lobes at top center; splat with four slightly out curving pierced vertical lobes over a heart shaped element with central with tear-drop shape piercing; trapezoidal slip seat; seat rails rounded on upper edge; skirt with undercut flat arch; cabriole front legs with shaped knee blocks and pad feet; rear legs round in cross section.

Construction: Stiles are mortised and through pinned into crest rail. The pierced splat is mortised into the crest rail and the shoe. The shoe is glued to the top edge of the back seat rail and to the top edge of a mahogany lath strip that is glued to the upper inside edge of the back seat rail to bring the rail flush with the width of the shoe. The side seat rails are double through tenoned and pinned into the stiles, and double tenoned and through pinned into the front legs. The back seat rail is tenoned (possibly double tenoned) with a through pin into the stiles. The front seat rail is double tenoned and through pinned into the front legs. The knee blocks are wrought nailed and glued in place.
The slip seat frame is lap-joined with wrought nails in each joint.
Label TextThis chair descended in the Sands family of Annapolis and was originally part of a set of at least twelve (this one is marked "XII" on the rear seat rail). Six virtually identical chairs survive in a private collection and may have been part of the original set. There is also an armchair of a very similar but not identical design with a history in the Brice family of Annapolis. The Brice House in that city is less than one block from the Sands House.

These Annapolis chairs are rare survivals of early Maryland seating furniture. The splat design appears on a number of later 18th-century Maryland chairs and is also seen on New York and British chairs (see CWF accessions 1940-148, 1973-350, 1-6, and 1976-124, 1-4).

An earlier chair by the same artisan probably dates from the late 1740s and is now in private hands. It demonstrates that the larger group of chairs reflects the work of a craftsman whose style evolved over the period of a decade or more. The most likely candidate is cabinet and chairmaker John Anderson, "late of Liverpool," who arrived in Annapolis in 1746 and worked there until his death in 1759. He is the only individual recorded in early Annapolis whose profession and longevity logically signal that he was capable of producing the distinct styles that emerged and evolved in that town. Furthermore, his British training is very much in keeping in the character of the chairs in question. A second Annapolis chairmaker is also documented in that early era--one Gamiel Butler. However, Butler worked a mere three years between his arrival in 1750 and his death in 1753--a period that seems too short to have impacted the stylistic evolution of Annapolis chairmaking that seems to appear there at mid century.
InscribedNone
Markings"XII" incised on the long block inside the rear seat rail; "XI" incised on the inner stile of each front leg; and "XII" faintly incised on the inner front rail of the slip seat.
ProvenanceThis side chair descended in the Sands family of Annapolis, and remained in the family home at 130 Prince George Street through six generations until acquired by vendor for sale on behalf of the family.

The chair is believed to have descended thus: John Sands (1731-1791) and his wife, Ann Graham, who purchased the house in 1771; to their son, Joseph Sands (1768-1832) and his wife, Sarah Rawlings; to their son, Joseph Sands, Jr. (1799-1840); to his sisters, Sarah (1806-1902) and Emily (1815-1901) Sands; to their niece, Susannah Sands (1843-1917), daughter of James Sands (1812-1889) and Jane Catherine Holland (b. 1820); to her daughter, Jane Revell Moss (1879-1968); to her daughter, Margery Moss Dowsett (b.1910); to her children, Ann Dowsett Jenson, Frederick Dowsett, and Margie Dowsett.

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