VERY FINE AND RARE CHIPPENDALE MAHOGANY SERPENTINE-FRONT CAMEL BACK SOFA, JOHN AND WILLIAM BRIGHT, BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS, CIRCA 1796-1799

John Walton Antiques, Jewett City, Connecticut;

Mrs. John Creem, Port Washington, New York;

Northeast Auctions, Manchester, New Hampshire, New Hampshire Auction, August 2, 1997, lot 677;

Marguerite Riordan, Stonington, Connecticut.

John Walton Antiques Advertisement, Magazine Antiques, November 1965, 88:5, p. 572;

"Northeast's Annual August Auction," Antiques and the Arts Weekly, August 29, 1997, p. 57-C.

This beautifully proportioned sofa is is quite important for the presence of the signature of its original eighteenth century Boston upholsters, John & William Bright. Upholster John Bright, probably the son of George Bright, was a partner with his brother William at 44 Marlborough Street in Boston between 1796 and 1799 and identified themselves as Upholsterers & Lace Manufacturers (see Myrna Kaye, "Eighteenth-Century Boston Furniture Craftsmen" in Boston Furniture of the Eighteenth Century, ed. Brock Jobe, (Boston, MA: Colonial Society of Massachusetts, 1974), p. 273). Another signed sofa is in the collection of Winterthur Museum. It is signed by its maker Adam Coe and dated 1812 (see Nancy E. Richards and Nancy Goyne Evans; with Wendy A. Cooper and Michael S. Podmaniczky, New England Furniture at Winterthur: Queen Anne and Chippendale Periods, (Winterthur, DE: Winterthur Museum, distributed by University Press of New England, 1997), no. 98, pp. 183-5).