A Fine and Rare Federal Carved Mahogany Lolling Chair, Portsmouth, New Hampshire, Circa 1800

The graceful tubular arms supported on reeded balusters above leg squares with a carved rosette indicate that this exemplary lolling chair was likely made in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. A closely related example is in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art (acc. no. 10.125.313)(R.T. Haines Halsey and Elizabeth Tower, Home of Our Ancestors, (New York: Doubleday, Doran and Company, Inc., 1934), fig. 164). Another example was sold at Sotheby’s, New York, Important Americana, January 18, 2018, sale 9805, lot 270. For an example with similar reeding and carved volutes to the arms see a settee in John S. Walton's advertisement in Magazine Antiques, vol. 81, no. 5, May 1962, p. 454. 

Another related chair but lacking the reeding on the upper baluster is in the collection of the Milwaukee Art Museum (American Furniture with Related Decorative Arts: 1660-1830, ed. Gerald W.R. Ward, (New York: Hudson hills Press, 1991), pp. 219-20, no. 84). For addition information on related Portsmouth chairs see Portsmouth Furniture: Masterworks from the New Hampshire Seacoast, ed. Brock Jobe, (Boston, MA: Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities; Hanover, NH: Distributed by University Press of New England, 1993), pp. 367-9.