The Clarkson Family Set of Twelve Chippendale Mahogany Side Chairs, New York, circa 1770

These twelve side chairs are exceedingly rare for remaining intact as a set since they were made in New York over 250 years ago. Today, they represent the largest set of American Chippendale seating furniture with cabriole legs known. Confirming their original manufacture as a set, each chair is incised with roman numerals I to XII on the inner seat frame with a corresponding number on the slip-seat frame. The side chairs have survived in remarkable condition, retaining their original surface, slip-seat frames, and glue blocks.

The chairs descended in the Clarkson family of New York to C. Blackburn Miller (b. 1885), the last family owner, and were known within the family as the “Matthew Clarkson” chairs. C. Blackburn Miller was a direct descendant of Matthew Clarkson (1733-1772) of New York, the likely original owner, although the chairs could also have been owned by his nephew, Matthew Clarkson (1758-1825), the Revolutionary War General. The elder Matthew Clarkson married Elizabeth De Peyster (1737-1775) in 1758 and resided in Flatbush, Long Island. He was active in the running of Trinity Church in New York City and served as a vestryman from 1765 to 1769. His son, David Matthew Clarkson (1759-1815), was also active at Trinity Church and served as a vestryman there. He was a merchant in New York City and established with his brother-in-law the mercantile firm of Van Horne and Clarkson in 1785. The chairs descended through four generations of the Clarkson family along male lines to Pauline Rives Clarkson Miller (1856-1932), Matthew Clarkson’s great-great-granddaughter, and then to her son, C. Blackburn Miller (b. 1885).¹

With a design closely following a chair pattern from The Gentleman & Cabinet-Maker’s Director by Thomas Chippendale, this set of side chairs displays the tendency of New York furniture makers to emulate English designs and forms including for the broad proportions which adhere to Chippendale’s directive.² Of the other surviving sets of New York chairs with the same splat pattern, most exhibit straight legs and a few have cabriole legs with claw-and-ball feet. Two chairs in the collection of the Museum of the City of New York and one chair at the Metropolitan Museum of Art stem from a related set with a history in the Cox family of Piping Rock, Long Island.³ Two side chairs with acanthus carved knees in the collection of the Museum of the City of New York a part of another related set that descended in the Thompson family of Brooklyn.⁴

¹ For additional information of the Clarkson family, see J. R. T. Craine, The Ancestry and Posterity of Matthew Clarkson, 1664-1702 (published by the author, 1971).

² Thomas Chippendale, The Gentleman & Cabinet-Maker’s Director, 3rd edition (London, 1762), plate 12, center.

³ See Morrison Heckscher, American Furniture in The Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York, 1985): no. 30, p. 72. See also Antiques (October 1953): p. 289, fig. 3.

⁴ John Kirk, American Chairs: Queen Anne and Chippendale (New York, 1972): no. 149.