A William and Mary Side Chair, Boston, Massachusetts, Circa 1710

Philip Budrose, Marblehead, Massachusetts, 1973;

Vogel Collection no. 185.

Erik K. Gronning, “Luxury of Choice: Boston’s Early Baroque Seating Furniture,” American Furniture 2018, ed. Luke Beckerdite, (Milwaukee, WI: Chipstone Foundation, 2018), figs. 71, 164, 165.

This side chair, with its carved crest and stretcher, represents the pinnacle of the second stage of Boston’s early Baroque seating furniture. Both the crest rail and front stretcher have arched reserves that enhance the chair’s vertical design. Boston chairmakers would make an assortment of different chairs at different price points. This particular chair would have been at the top of the price list because it has a carved crest rail and front stretchers. The next less expensive variant exchanges the carved front stretcher for a less costly bipartite baluster stretcher (see example in collection at Metropolitan Museum of Art (acc. no. 52.77.58) in Frances Gruber Safford, American Furniture in the Metropolitan Museum of Art: Early Colonial Period: The Seventeenth-Century and William and Mary Styles, (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2007), p. 76-8, no. 27). The last option was to omit the carving entirely. For additional information on related chairs see Erik K. Gronning, “Luxury of Choice: Boston’s Early Baroque Seating Furniture,” American Furniture 2018, ed. Luke Beckerdite, (Milwaukee, WI: Chipstone Foundation, 2018).