Click to see larger image

ca. 1760-1775

Boston-Salem area, Massachusetts

Mahogany; eastern white pine, birch

33 1/2 x 29 3/4 x 27 x 16 3/4 (SH) in.
(85 x 75.6 x 68.6 x 42.6 cm.)

Condition:
 The left leg has split, as has the front leg's knee at the left seat rail tenon. Two rear supports for the loose seat frame have been replaced, and the original commode seat has been removed.

Publications:
 Fitzgerald, Three Centuries, p. 63

Chippendale Roundabout Chair
As depicted in eighteenth-century portraits, roundabout, or corner, chairs were popular for both reading and writing. John Singleton Copley's portrait of John Bours, for example, depicts the Newport sitter in a contemplative pose seated in a similar chair while reading. A contemporary portrait of George Wyllis of Hartford attributed to Joseph Steward contains even more explicit references to the sitter's writing and reading, including a roundabout chair. Eighteenth-century household inventories confirm the frequent proximity of roundabout chairs to gentlemen's desks and bookcases, and suggest that they often belonged to larger matched sets of parlor seating furniture.1 Other English names for this form include "smoking" and "barber's" chairs, both functions also specifically male.

In each instance, roundabout chairs, anticipating modern office furniture, permitted sitters to turn freely between a desk or table and anyone else in a room without having to readjust the chair's position. The angular front corner of this Boston chair must have made swiveling less comfortable than the generously curved rails of contemporary Newport roundabout chairs, which express more overtly the act of straddling.2 The probability that this chair was once part of a larger set of matching chairs may account for the sacrifice of comfort to consistency of design. Also like many roundabout chairs, this example originally served as a commode chair, as indicated by the frame for a chamber pot fastened to the rails below the loose seat frame.

Comparison with several related chairs reveals the range of design options available to the purchaser. Cabriole legs with claw and ball feet, for example, were more expensive than straight legs or common pad feet, but less expensive than carved knees like these. The fluted arm supports on the State Department's chair would have cost several shillings more than the plain vase and ring turnings found on other chairs, although simply turned supports often correspond more harmoniously to the turned stretchers of the base. Optional crossed stretchers had little to do with the chair's actual stability, as opposed to the shaped crest that secured the joint between the arms and provided support for sitters inclined to slouch in the curved portion of the back between the pierced splats. Finally, high-style chairs like this example but without a commode seat could be upholstered over the rails and embellished with ornamental brass-headed tacks.

Author:
Thomas Michie