A rare William and Mary walnut wainscot armchair, Pennsylvania 1710-1730

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Description

height 43 1/2 in.
110.5 cm

Provenance

According to the article written by Homer Eaton Keyes, this chair was "perhaps once the property of Jacob Winchell in his old house, erected 1711, near Sycamore Mills."
Collection of J. Watts Mercur

Exhibited

This chair was part of a October 1923 loan exhibition held by the Delaware County Historical Society in the old Colonial Court House in Chester, Pennsylvania.

Literature

Keyes, Homer Eaton, "Some Pennsylvania Furniture" in Philadelphia Furniture and Its Makers, edited by John Snyder. New York: Maine Street/Universe Books, 1975. fig. Ia, p. 12.

Catalogue Note

A rare form even in its own time, the Wainscot armchair was costly to manufacture in America during the 17^th century and only affordable to the well-to-do. This example is of a type made in Chester County, Pennsylvania, where the influence of chairs made in Cheshire, England was prevalent.

The shape of the arms and use of quarter round moldings relates it to a 1758 settle at the Chester County Historical Society attributed to Abraham Darlington of Chester County (see Margaret Schiffer, Furniture and Its Makers of Chester County, Pennsylvania, 1978, fig. 21). A walnut Wainscot chair at Winterthur Museum with the same unusual features also displays the details seen on this chair of rounded finials and a crest rail with an angularly-cut upper perimeter (see Benno Forman, American Seating Furniture, 1630-1730, 1988, no. 22, p. 156-157). Another chair of this type at Winterthur Museum offers several of these same distinctive characteristics (see Forman, no. 23, p. 158-159). Another similarly patterned example has a history in the Pennock family of Chester County (see Forman, fig. 69, p. 140). For additional related examples, see the Wainscot chair offered as lot 206 in this sale and one with a double-paneled back sold in these rooms, Fine Americana, January 28-31, 1993, sale 6392, lot 1275.