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Armchair

Designer After a design by Thomas Chippendale British
ca. 1755
Not on view
This enormous armchair is ambitious in both scale and design. Its bold contours are enabled by the dense mahogany that came from the colonized West Indies. Distinct in its beautiful grain and light-reflecting sheen, mahogany became eighteenth-century Britain’s medium of magnificence, its “national wood.” Thomas Chippendale’s design for this “French Chair,” published in The Gentleman and Cabinet-Maker’s Director (1754), specified that it “must be covered with Tapestry, or other sort of Needlework.” Here, the needlework depicts a scene of the Annunciation, the feast day when contracts for trades and craftspeople were renegotiated.

Artwork Details

Object Information
  • Title: Armchair
  • Designer: After a design by Thomas Chippendale (British, baptised Otley, West Yorkshire 1718–1779 London)
  • Date: ca. 1755
  • Culture: British
  • Medium: Mahogany, needlework
  • Dimensions: Overall: 51 × 31 1/2 × 33 in. (129.5 × 80 × 83.8 cm)
  • Classification: Woodwork-Furniture
  • Credit Line: Gift of Irwin Untermyer, 1964
  • Object Number: 64.101.980
  • Curatorial Department: European Sculpture and Decorative Arts

More Artwork

More Artwork
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Pier Glass Frame, in Chippendale Drawings, Vol. I, Thomas Chippendale British, Graphite
Pier Glass Frame, in Chippendale Drawings, Vol. I
Thomas Chippendale
ca. 1753–62
Pier Glass Frame, in Chippendale Drawings, Vol. I, Thomas Chippendale British, Graphite
Pier Glass Frame, in Chippendale Drawings, Vol. I
Thomas Chippendale
ca. 1753–62
Pier Glass Frame, in Chippendale Drawings, Vol. I, Thomas Chippendale British, Graphite
Pier Glass Frame, in Chippendale Drawings, Vol. I
Thomas Chippendale
ca. 1753–62
Chimneypiece, in Chippendale Drawings, Vol. I, Thomas Chippendale British, Graphite
Chimneypiece, in Chippendale Drawings, Vol. I
Thomas Chippendale
ca. 1753–62
Moldings for Library Bookcase, from Chippendale Drawings, Vol. II, Thomas Chippendale British, Black ink
Moldings for Library Bookcase, from Chippendale Drawings, Vol. II
Thomas Chippendale
1753

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