A Fine and Rare Chippendale Side Chair, attributed to Benjamin Randolph (1737-1791), Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, circa 1770

Joseph Kindig Jr. & Son, York, Pennsylvania;

Abram R. and Blanche M. Harpending, Monroe, New York;

Sotheby’s, New York, Important Americana, the Collection of Abram R. and Blanche M. Harpending, February 1, 1985, sale 5296, lot 609;

Private Collection;

Sotheby’s, New York, Important Americana, January 16-17, 1999, sale 7253, lot 776.

This side chair retains a rich dark historic surface and is numbered V of a larger set of chairs. It represents a popular chair pattern made in Philadelphia during the Colonial period, with a pierced splat adapted from Plate XIII and Plate XIV of The Gentleman & Cabinet-Maker’s Director by Thomas Chippendale (London, 1762). This chair is associated with the shop of Benjamin Randolph (1737-1792) on the basis of shared similarities with labeled side chairs numbered III and IV in the Karolik Collection at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston and two numbered I and II in a private collection.¹ These chairs are the focus of the article by Philip D. Zimmerman, “Labeled Randolph Chairs Rediscovered,” in American Furniture 1998, edited by Luke Beckerdite (Milwaukee: The Chipstone Foundation), pp. 81-98.

This chair is nearly identical to a chair with a history in the Biddle family marked V in the collection of Yale University Art Gallery (acc. no. 1930.2102b).² Another side chair possibly made as part of the same set was sold in these rooms in the Property from the Collection of Mr. And Mrs. George Fenimore Johnson, January 19, 2008, sale 8401, lot 99. Several other chairs are known with a closely related design representing multiple shop traditions. One is illustrated in The Philadelphia Chair, 1685-1785 by Joseph K. Kindig, III.³ Two other related chairs were sold in these rooms in The Highly Important Americana Collection of George S. Parker II from the Caxambas Foundation, January 19, 2017, sale 9605, lots 1254 and 2119.

¹ Edwin Hipkiss, Eighteenth-Century American Arts: The M. and M. Karolik Collection (Boston, 1950). no. 89, pp. 152-3 .

² Patricia E. Kane, Three-Hundred Years of American Seating Furniture (Boston, 1976) no. 92, p. 109-110.

³ Joseph K. Kindig III, The Philadelphia Chair (York, Pennsylvania, 1978), fig. 54.