Description:
Massachusetts slat-back side chair with material wrapped around the seat rails. Side chairs that incorporate the stylish turned ornament of armchairs are very rare survivals from the seventeenth century, and early seating furniture identified with western Massachusetts is rarer still. This chair was found locally in the 1990s and illustrates the workmanship of early shop traditions in turned furniture in western Massachusetts. Two motifs on the chair are particularly characteristic of local craftsmanship: the use of a turned rail at the top of the slat back remained popular in Hampshire County chairmaking through the eighteenth century; and similar cup and flame finials have been found on turned "great" or armchairs with family histories of ownership in the Hatfield and Northampton area. Samuel Allis (1647-1691) of Hatfield was a prominent craftsman who may have been the one to make the first chairs in this style. This chair is supported by a box stretcher base of two stretchers each on the front and sides, and a single stretcher at the back. The stretchers link straight front legs with turned baluster shapes above the upper stretchers; and rear posts with turned baluster shapes connected with three slats (one turned slat over two slightly arched slats), which are below a pair of cup and flame finials. Historic Deerfield owns related armchairs (88.029 and 95.042), as does PVMA (side chair), the Hatfield Historical Society (armchair), Wadsworth Atheneum (armchair), and the Concord Museum (loaned armchair).
Link to share this object record:
https://museums.fivecolleges.edu/detail.php?t=objects&type=ext&id_number=HD+2006.31 |
