A Very Fine and Rare Pair of Federal Side Chairs, attributed to Thomas Seymour(1771–1848), possibly with John Seymour (1738–1818), Boston, Massachusetts, circa 1808-12

Israel Sack, Inc., New York;

Mr. and Mrs. Robert Lee Gill, New York;

Charles Pollak, LLC., New York.

Robert D. Musey Jr., The Furniture Masterworks of John and Thomas Seymour, (Salem, MA: Peabody Essex Museum, 2002), pp. 388-9, no. 127.

Luxury and Innovation: Furniture Masterworks by John and Thomas Seymour, November 17, 2003 thru February 15, 2004, Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, Massachusetts.

This pair of chairs represents a fourth variation of the Seymours' curved diamond backs. Robert Mussey, Jr. states “it seems most likely that the Seymours had actual imported English examples of related design from which to work. No English-trained chairmaker of high skill is known to have immigrated to Boston who might have brought the pattern with him or who might have worked as a journeyman for them. No other Boston chairmaker appears to have attempted another interpretation of this complex and obviously expensive form. The curving crest rail with its veneered central tablet and curving and tapering reeded sections with the ringturned ends was the most difficult element to make. Note that it is bowed overall for comfort and, especially, the turned details of the "roller ends," which are turned on two different off-center axes. The result is that the rail had to be fixed on the lathe on two successive sets of turning centers. Additional work with spokeshaves and rasps created the rounded shapes on the rear of the rail. The central tablet on the front was veneered, and reeds were worked in using a special jig and a scratch-molding tool. The ends of the crest rail were then doweled into the scrolled top ends of the stiles of the back legs and screwed through from the outside of the legs, and a ring-turned wood button was applied over the screw head (“the roller screw'd through the eye of the scrolls”). The fabrication of the tracery rails of the curving back was nearly as complicated. Each is shaped in three dimensions, reeded on their shafts, leaf-carved at the ends, and with adjacent pairs joined at the center and accurately mortised into the leg stiles and horizontal “stay rails” at compound angles.