Description:
One of a pair of Gothic side chairs, each supported by two cabriole legs ornamented with acanthus leaf carving and ball-and-claw feet and by round, outflaring rear legs, below a seat frame with a carved anthemion flanked by two shallow arches designed to receive a loose, slip seat, all below a back composed of a pierced Gothic splat flanked by tapering, fluted stiles and surmounted with a carved foliate serpentine crest rail. Of the type attributed to Thomas Tufft (d. 1788), the chairs are very fine, high-style illustrations of the Gothic fashion in Philadelphia seating furniture. A chair from the set, owned by M.A. Norton, is illustrated in Wallace Nutting's "Furniture Treasury", fig. 2194. Originally owned by the Bary family of Baltimore, the pair of chairs at Historic Deerfield, marked III and IV, were also once part of the Norton collection and formerly were on loan to the Wadsworth Atheneum. Sold to an anonymous physician, antiques dealer Willoughby Farr of Edgewater, New Jersey, sold them to the Hursts in 1932. The corner blocks are replaced.
Link to share this object record:
https://museums.fivecolleges.edu/detail.php?t=objects&type=ext&id_number=HD+1999.8.2 |
