Very Fine and Rare Chippendale Carved Walnut Easy Chair, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Circa 1765

Charles Woolsey Lyon, Millbrook, New York.

Charles Woolsey Lyon advertisement, Magazine Antiques (May 1971). Described in the advertisement as a “supreme example” that achieves “an appearance reminiscent of a true thoroughbred.”

The American easy chair form originally served as an invalid chair in the seventeenth century and had become by the mid eighteenth century a very costly status piece displayed in the finest rooms of the house. The tall back, shaped wings, horizontally rolled arms, bowed seat rail, outward thrusting rear legs and front cabriole legs with carved knees and claw feet identify this example as the most expensive version of its form made in Philadelphia, where the price book for 1772 lists such chairs “with Claw feet & leaves” [on the knees] at £3-5-0 in mahogany.

Displaying the art of the upholsterer and carver, this handsome easy chair is distinguished by its broad proportions, pronounced C-scroll arms, high relief flowerhead- and acanthus carved knees, graceful ankles, and bold claw feet with well-articulated talons. A similar Philadelphia easy chair is in the collection of Winterthur Museum and illustrated in Joseph Downs, American Furniture, Queen Anne and Chippendale Periods, New York, 1952, no. 88. Another of mahogany with a history in the McClenachen family of Philadelphia is illustrated in William M. Hornor, Blue Book Philadelphia Furniture, 1935, p. xiii.