The Cecil Franklin Backus Very Fine and Rare Set of Six Chippendale Carved Mahogany Side Chairs, carving attributed to John Pollard and possibly the workshop of Benjamin Randolph, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, circa 1770

Chairs retain a dark rich surface.  Chairs and their slip seats marked I, II, III, IIII, V, VI.  Some pierced leg brackets replaced and some brackets reinforced at a later date with an added laminate.

Cecil Franklin Backus Esq., Philadelphia, Pennsylvania;
Sotheby's New York, Important American Furniture, Folk Art and Folk Paintings, October 25, 1992, sale 6350, lot 312;
Israel Sack, Inc., New York

William Macpherson Hornor, Jr., Blue Book Philadelphia Furniture William Penn to George Washington, (Washington, DC: Highland House Publishers, 1977), p. 178, pl 363;
Israel Sack, Inc., Celebrating Our 90th Anniversary, (New York: Israel Sack, Inc., 1993), pp. 16-7, P-6503

Secondary wood is oak and poplar. The brackets on all the chairs have been reenforced with an added laminate of plywood. A number of the brackets have modern saw curf marks and are replaced however there are several that have age related cracking and exhibit oxidation an square nail holes and alre likley original to the their respective chair. Chair I with replaced glue blocks, chair Ii with rear glue blocks replaced. chair III only proper left front glue block is original. chair IIII all glue blocks replaced. Chair V proper right front glue block may be original. chair VI patch to proper right upper corner of leg.
In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective qualified opinion.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING CONDITION OF A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD "AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF SALE PRINTED IN THE CATALOGUE.

With carving by one of Philadelphia's most talented London-trained craftsmen and a design based upon plate XVI of the The Gentleman & Cabinet-Maker's Director, these side chairs are among the finest examples of Philadelphia seating furniture in the Rococo style. They bear additional importance for having survived as a set for nearly 250 years.

The distinctive pendant bellflower with beads on the crest is a trademark motif found in the work of the Philadelphia carver, John Pollard (1740-1787), who executed very similar ones on commode seat side chairs with hairy paw feet commissioned by John Cadwalader (1742-1786) from Benjamin Randolph (1737-1792) in circa 1769.¹  John Pollard was the principle carver in Randolph's shop at the time of the Cadwalader commission and is believed to be responsible for the masterful carving of the commode seat chairs.² As Pollard was known to reuse his carving repertoire, this motif is found on other examples of his work, including a set of chairs made for David Deshler (d. 1792), a set of chairs made for Charles Thomson and a tea table made for the Biddle family.³

The backs of these chairs are identical to four side chairs at Winterthur with straight seat rails and hairy paw feet made by Randolph as part of the Cadwalader suite.⁴  See also a side chair in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art attributed to Randolph and Pollard with semi-exposed carved seat rails and hairy paw feet.⁵ A plain version of this chair at Yale University bears the label of Benjamin Randolph.⁶  The same back is found on a set of side chairs with straight seat rails, acanthus carved knees and claw feet represented by single side chairs published by Israel Sack and Joe Kindig, Jr.⁷ Two other sets of chairs which have identical backs except for the addition of two extra piercings in the lower part of the splat near the shoe include: the Edwards Family set, each with carved knees and skirt and claw-and-ball feet, of which several are known, four at Winterthur,⁸ two from the collection of William J. Doyle of New York, each bearing a paper label inscribed Elizabeth Edwards, 1766, one which sold at Sotheby's as part of the Collection of Abram and Blanche Harpending;⁹ the second is the Charles Wharton set of which at least nine are known, four at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, two in the Kaufman Collection, one at the State Department, and a pair advertised by Israel Sack Inc.¹⁰

A pair of side chairs offered as lot __ in this sale also exhibits carving attributed to Pollard as does the Captain John Green tall-case clock offered as lot ___.

¹ For two chairs from the Cadwalader suite, see Leroy Graves and Luke Beckerdite, "New Insights on John Cadwalder's Commode-Seat Side Chairs," American Furniture 2000, figs. 3 and 5, pp. 154-5. See also Andrew Brunk, "Benjamin Randolph Revisited," American Furniture 2007, fig. 48, p. 33.
² See Graves and Beckerdite, pp. 153 and 156.
³ One chair from the Deshler set is illustrated in Israel Sack Inc., American Antiques from Israel Sack Collection, Volume VI, P3920, p. 48. See one chair from the Thomson set at Chipstone in Oswaldo Rodriguez Roque, American Furniture at Chipstone, Madison, 1984, no. 63, pp. 144-5 and for the tea table, Christie's, January 18-19, 2001, lot 119.
⁴ See Joseph Downs, American Furniture, Queen Anne and Chippendale, New York, 1952, fig. 129.
⁵ See Morrison Heckscher, American Furniture in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1985, fig. 58.
⁶ See Patricia Kane, 300 Years of American Seating Furniture, Boston, 1976, no. 108, pp. 128-9.
⁷ See Sack, Volume V, P3925, p. 1168 and Joe Kindig Jr. advertisement in The Magazine Antiques (February 1951).
⁸ See Downs, fig. 130.
⁹ Sotheby's, February 1, 1985, sale 5296, lot 617.
¹⁰ Sack, Volume IV, P4011, pp. 1086-7.

Cecil Franklin Backus (1885-1966)

Cecil Franklin Backus was born in Portsmouth, Virginia on May 6, 1885 and died in Easton, Maryland, on August 30, 1966. His collection was formed between 1922, shortly after his marriage to Elizabeth Edsall of Wilmington, until 1933, just after her death.

Cecil Backus graduated from the University of Virginia in 1906 with a major in chemistry and immediately went to work for the Eastern Laboratory of the E. I. Dupont De Nemours Powder Company. He later transferred to the Atlas Powder Company in Wilmington, and during World War I he served in the Ordinance Department of the United States Army, where he attained the rank of major and was placed in charge of purchasing nitroglycerin for the army. After the war he became affiliated with the investment banking firm of Gillespie & Meeds, which later became Laird, Bissell & Meeds, where he served as a partner until retiring in 1945. He enjoyed boating and shooting, and being a friend of Frank Du Pont, who lived in Easton, Maryland, he purchased 'Kirkland Farm' in Eason and moved there in 1950 with his collection.

After Backus married Elizabeth Edsall, daughter of a Wilmington physician, by whom he had three children, he began to collect American furniture: possibly in part from his tidewater Virginia upbringing; possibly in part because his wife was a descendant of David Wilson (who built the Wilson-Warner House, now owned and operated by Winterthur Museum with the Corbin House, in Odessa, Delaware); possibly in part because of his relationship with his neighbor and near contemporary Henry Francis du Pont (1880-1969); and possibly in part because of the collecting interests and activities of his partners and their wives – William Winder Laird, George Bissell, and Hollyday Stone Meeds Jr. The nationalistic and patriotic decade of the twenties following World War I witnessed a new pride in the cultural heritage of America, which brought increased status to the ownership of American antiques.

Lesser known and more anonymous than these collecting giants of the twenties, we now know there was a host of vigorous and knowledgeable antiquarians like Cecil Backus who toured the surrounding countryside from Delaware to Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Virginia amassing notable collections in untiring quest of the old and beautiful. By this time Henry Ford's Model T and other inexpensive cars allowed many American city dwellers to take to highways and country byways, where they envisioned attics, store rooms, and barns of old farmhouses full of undiscovered treasures. While Backus retained records of his purchases, he left little by way of written account of his initial interest that launched his collecting, his primary goals in forming and shaping the collection, or why he abruptly halted his quest in 1933, which was most likely a combination of factors including the death of his wife, a full-house of furniture, and possibly the turmoil of the Great Depression. Clearly the high quality and large size of his collection is testimony to the patience and persistence of Cecil Backus and is a tribute to his well-trained "collector's eye" in recognizing the excellence and elegance of the best in early American craftsmanship.

Following the death of his first wife in 1933, Cecil Backus married Alice Candee, daughter of a Wilmington clergyman, in 1935 and moved his collection to Grant Avenue in Wilmington, the to 'Ashlei' in Greenville, Delaware, and then upon his retirement to 'Kirkland Farm' in Easton, Maryland, in 1950. Upon his death in August 1966, his widow moved the collection to 'Colston' in Easton, where it remained until her death in 1992.

We can only infer that this inner circle of Wilmington collectors, members of the Du Pont family or related to them by marriage, had an influence during the 1920's on the tastes and direction of Cecil Franklin Backus. From the evidence of the objects he collected, he has established for himself in his own enigmatic way a unique place in collecting history.