Bow-back Windsor side chair

1790-1800

Measurements

33-1/4 in x 19-3/4 in x 22-1/2 in

Materials

Tulip poplar seat, maple leg and stretcher turnings, hickory bow and spindles

Credit Line

Historic Odessa Foundation, The David Wilson Mansion, Inc.

Accession Number

1971.631

Inscription

The chair has a faint, unreadable chalk inscription on the underside of the seat.

Condition Notes

The chair has been completely stripped of all paint and is refinished.  A small scorch mark is on the underside of the medial stretcher, just to the left of center.  Most of the rounded ends of the legs are loose in the seat mortises.

Provenance

Ex coll. Mrs. E. Tatnall (Mary Corbit) Warner.

Comments

This Windsor side chair combines a bowed back, a contoured shield-shaped, and baluster turnings in the legs.  Bowed backs were introduced in the mid 1780s, but the very attenuated balusters in the legs seem later, as they resemble bamboo-turned legs in their narrow diameters.  Bamboo turnings were introduced about 1790, which suggests an appropriate earliest date for this chair.

The chair back has nine spindles within the bow.  The bow has a flat face with double scratch beads.  It joins the thick carved seat in rectangular tenons wedged from underneath. 

An early accession record cites a printed label on the underside of the seat, now removed, that reads, “The Library Commission / For The State of Delaware / Dover, Delaware.”