RHODE ISLAND OR MASSACHUSETTS, 1780-1805

Distinguished by its undercut, down-scrolling ears, pronounced baluster-turned posts and legs with abrupt tapers, this Windsor side chair exhibits designs favored by Rhode Island makers but emulated by Boston craftsmen working in the late eighteenth century. Four chairs, including a pair that descended in the Pease family, in the Rhode Island Furniture Archive display virtually identical characteristics. Another chair in the collection of Colonial Williamsburg is closely related but has slightly variant post turnings. Nancy Goyne Evans attributes the latter to Boston and further elaborates on the leg and stretcher turnings. The legs have balusters with short necks and the swell of the medial stretcher is flanked on either side by a "reel-like cylinder." Also seen on the chair offered here, this last device, argues Evans, is a hallmark of Boston manufacture (see Rhode Island Furniture Archive at the Yale University Art Gallery, RIF692, RIF 3936, RIF4782 and RIF4213; Nancy Goyne Evans, "Politics, Enterprise, and Design: The Nature and Influence of Windsor Chairmaking in Early Federal Rhode Island," American Furniture 1999, Luke Beckerdite, ed. (Milwaukee, Wisconsin, 1999), pp. 73-74).