Object Type: Furniture

Creation Place: North America, United States, New York

Medium and Support: Maple, ash; later repair in pine

Credit Line: Florence Griswold Museum

Accession Number: 1975.11

This type of chair, in period sources called a York chair or fiddle-back chair, was likely made in New York City or the Hudson River Valley between 1740 and 1800. The inexpensive York chairs were quickly turned with minimal carved ornament, and exported to neighboring colonies where they earned the name. Examples were traded to Connecticut and Rhode Island in the 18th century, where they influenced the form of locally produced examples. These chairs represent a simplified iteration of the late-Baroque Queen Anne style, and enjoyed a long period of popularity at a modest cost: similar chairs sold for roughly $1 in the wake of the American Revolution. The large front legs with relatively delicate pad feet of this example emulate the form of a more labor-intensive carved cabriole leg, and are a feature associated with the Hudson River Valley. This side chair with a trapezoidal, woven rush seat cants back at a slight angle. The rear stiles feature vasiform turning below the yoke-crest, a vasiform backsplat giving it the period name “fiddle-back chair,” and tapered cylindrical front legs beginning with ball turnings below the seat rail and terminating in pad feet. The front stretcher with exaggerated ball and disc turning shows extensive wear consistent with age. There are two unadorned turned stretchers on each side turned of a ring-porous wood (possibly ash), and a single stretcher on the rear. This chair retains two coats of paint, an early red-brown, possibly ochre, and a later coat of glossy black paint. The woven rush seat is modern. There have been two repairs to the crest rail. In the first, over the left stile, a small split was secured with a nail. In the second, a large loss was patched with black painted pine, secured with a screw in the center, and a wooden peg below the right ear.