The Important Colonel George Watson Queen Anne Walnut and Maple Easy Chair, Newport, Rhode Island, Circa 1755

Herbert Schiffer Antiques, Exton, Pennsylvania;

Purchased by Joe Kindig, Jr. in the 1950s;

Joe Kindig Antiques, Lancaster, Pennsylvania.

Patricia E. Kane, et al., Art and Industry in Early America: Rhode Island Furniture, 1650-1830 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Art Gallery, 2016),pp. 94 n75, 349-352, 355, no. 72.

Rhode Island Furniture Archive, RIF5717

This easy chair is one of the few examples of its form that survives with its original eighteenth-century hand-embroidered crewel upholstery and much of its foundation under-upholstery, webbing and grass stuffing. It was originally owned by Colonel George Watson (1718-1800), a prominent merchant in Plymouth, Massachusetts.¹ He likely acquired it after marrying Phebe Thurston (1740-1825) of Newport in 1781. She was baptized in Newport in 1740, the daughter of Jonathan Thurston (c. 1689-1749) and his second wife, Mehetabel Claghorn (c. 1708-1745). In 1764, Phebe married her first husband John Bennett Scott (1739-1767), a Newport merchant who predeceased her. This chair may correspond to one of the two easy chairs listed in Phebe’s estate inventory after she died in Plymouth in 1825.²The needlework upholstery was likely worked by Phebe Thurston. It is executed in a meandering floral pattern centering a flowering vine emerging from an openwork basket. This pattern may have been inspired by the “tree of life” motif found on Indian palampores that were made for Western markets and imported to the colonies beginning in the late 17^th century.³ Nearly identical hand-embroidered crewel upholstery is displayed on a Newport easy chair made of mahogany in the collection of the Newport Historical Society that descended in the Ellery Family of Newport, a family related by marriage to the Thurston family.⁴ The Ellery easy chair was presented by William Ellery to his daughter Almy on the occasion of her marriage to William Stedman in 1790. Its needlework was worked by Almy Ellery on a dark green worsted wool ground in a closely related meandering floral pattern. Similarities in design and rendering of the embroidery on the two easy chairs suggest they were laid out by the same hand or based upon related patterns.

Made of walnut, this easy chair exhibits the features found on Rhode Island easy chairs of short stocky front legs and massive medial and rear stretchers. The stretchers with conical ends capped with a single ring is a rare feature also known on a set of four side chairs ascribed to Newport in the collection of the National Trust for Historic Preservation in Washington, D.C. and on loan to the Preservation Society of Newport County.⁵

Several other American easy chairs retaining their original upholstery include a Newport example attributed to Caleb Gardner, Jr. in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art,⁶ one made in Massachusetts at Bayou Bend, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (accession number B.60.89), one at the Brooklyn Museum of Art (accession number 32.38), and one at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (accession number 1994.267). One made in Northeastern Massachusetts now at Winterthur Museum retained its original needlework and stuffing when it was acquired by Henry Francis du Pont in 1930, though the original stuffing has since been replaced and the needlework substantially repaired.⁷

¹ A portrait of Colonel George Watson by John Singleton Copley is in the collection of the New Orleans Museum of Art, accession 77.37.

² “Massachusetts, Plymouth County, Probate Estate Files, 1686-1915,” case no. 22245.

³ Patricia E. Kane, et al., Art and Industry in Early America: Rhode Island Furniture, 1650-1830 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Art Gallery, 2016), p. 349.

⁴ See ibid no. 73, pp. 352-54.

⁵ See ibid, fig. 2, p. 351.

⁶ See Morrison Heckscher, American Furniture in The Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York: Random House, 1985), no. 72, pp. 122-24.

⁷ See Nancy Richards and Nancy Evans, New England Furniture at Winterthur (Winterthur: The Henry Francis du Pont Winterthur Museum, 1997), no. 79, pp. 144-45.