Description:
Chippendale easy chair or wing chair with front cabriole legs ending in ball-and-claw feet, turned, compressed side stretchers, and one missing knee block. Claw feet were not popular until after the middle of the eighteenth century; this foot was used interchangeably with the earlier pad foot, especially since the turned pad foot was less expensive than the claw foot. These were often the most comfortable chairs in the house, often reserved for invalids, pregnant women, or the elderly. Since the wings captured heat from the fireplace, they were commonly used in bedrooms of the well-to-do. The first American easy chairs appeared during the William and Mary period (1690-1720); the Queen Anne style (1720-1755) was replaced by the Chippendale period (1755-1790), the heyday of American easy chairs. The chair is upholstered in Indian export fabric decorated with silk tambour embroidery, dating to the second half of the eighteenth century. The design of the textile, which was possibly made in Gujurat, reflects western taste in Eastern export fabrics, with sparse, colorful floral designs set against a light ground. The fabric may have been purchased by museum founder Helen Geier Flynt (1895-1986) or purchased/supplied by the Ernest Lo Nano firm, which reuphostered the chair in the mid-1950s. The easy chair itself was proportedly once owned by James Lovell Little and the great-granddaughter of Paul Revere, Mary Revere Little.
Subjects:
Textile fabrics; Embroidery; polychrome; Silk Link to share this object record:
https://museums.fivecolleges.edu/detail.php?t=objects&type=ext&id_number=HD+2049 |
