PHILADELPHIA, 1750-1770

Recently featured in the traveling exhibition celebrating the tercentenary of Franklin's birth, Benjamin Franklin: In Search of a Better World, this commode armchair is a rare survival from the renowned statesman's household. With its bold, outscrolling arms and trifid feet, the armchair illustrates the Philadelphia aesthetic of the Queen Anne and early Chippendale eras and was most likely made in the late 1750s or 1760s. Like most of the surviving artifacts once owned by Franklin, the armchair was inherited by his daughter, Sally, who married Richard Bache (1737-1811). The armchair then descended primarily along the female lines to the present owner. For more on Franklin's household possessions, see Page Talbott, "Benjamin Franklin at Home," in Page Talbott, ed., Benjamin Franklin: In Search of a Better World (New Haven, 2005), pp. 122-161.