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Slat Back Side Chair

Period1740 - 1760

MediumMaple

Dimensions45 × 20.75 × 17 in. (114.3 × 52.7 × 43.2 cm)

ClassificationsSeating Furniture

Credit LineMarshall P. Blankarn Purchasing Fund, 1978

Object number1978.13.1

DescriptionThe maple frame includes five graduated and arched slats, back posts with turned ball finials double scored around their center point and with a nipple on the top, and cabriole or "crookt" front legs that are chamfered on their front edge and end in squared feet. A robustly turned tripartite front stretcher features two scored balls separated by a reel, and conical ends. Two pairs of dowel-turned side stretchers and a single rear stretcher complete the basic chair frame. The rear posts end in an abrupt taper. The rush seat is protected by shaped casings on three sides which are finished with a narrow bead. The seat, which is original to the chair, was woven with tightly twisted rush in a checkered pattern of three strands over three strands.

Curatorial RemarksChairs of this type have been attributed for many years to the Philadelphia shops of Solomon Fussell (1704 - 1762) and his apprentice William Savery (1721 / 22 - 1787). This particular example, however, does not have the type of leg found on Savery rush-bottom chairs. Fussell's ledger covering the years 1738 to 1751 survives. It documents that he was making thousands of slat back, rush bottom chairs with two to five slats that came with or without arms. Fussell charged 3 shillings for his basic common chairs, which probably had only two slats. The ledger indicates that the price for three-slat chairs in 1739 was 4 shillings. It then increased at the rate of 1 shilling per slat up to six slats. "Crookt" legs, or what today we call cabriole legs, began at 10 shillings, reflecting the additional work and skilled labor required to make the more elaborate front legs. By 1750, the price of side chairs had gradually risen to 12 shillings and that of an arm chair to 15 shillings. To keep up with demand, Fussell purchased chair parts such as slats and seat lists (the parts that frame the seat) in large volume from other shops. None of the accounts indicate that the jobbers made arm supports or legs for turned chairs. These elements were apparently produced in the Fussell shop as needed. For more information on these Delaware Valley slat back chairs, see Benno M. Forman, "Delaware Valley 'Crookt Foot' and Slat-back Chairs: The Fussell-Savery Connection," in Winterthur Portfolio, Vol. 15, No. 1 (Spring 1980), 41 - 64.

Collections

Furniture

ProvenancePurchased at Morrill's Auctions, Bridgeton, Maine, on 24 June 1978. It was accompanied by the belief that the chair had been sold years earlier by Joe Kindig Jr. to Arthur J. Sussel, a noted collector of Pennsylvania decorative arts. However, the chair does not appear in the Parke-Bernet Galleries auction catalogs for October 1958 and January 1959 when the Sussel collection was sold.