American; New York City or vicinity
Cherry
35 5/8 x 18 1/2 x 15 in. (90.5 x 47 x 38.1 cm)
Purchase, Gift of the Members of the Committee of the Bertha King Benkard Memorial Fund, and Bequest of Cecile L. Mayer, by exchange; and Fletcher Fund and Joseph Pulitzer Bequest, by exchange, 1997 (1997.68)
This chair, ornamented with turnings of repeated barrel, flattened ball, and baluster shapes, is of a distinctive type associated with areas of Dutch cultural influence in New York and northern New Jersey. Its overall design and turned motifs, including the urn-and-flame finials, are based on a form of chair that was popular in the Netherlands during the second half of the seventeenth century. This type of turned chair derived its basic format from that of fashionable seventeenth-century upholstered chairs.
