1742 on the inside of its right rear stile in chalk. He is probably the “William Roby, Jun., of Boston, upholsterer” who is named in an Essex County, Massachusetts, deed.236 As Gardner did on the Metropolitan chair, Roby placed his signature in an area intended to be concealed by upholstery.
The arms of the Gardner chair, like those of the majority New England Queen Anne easy chairs, terminate in vertical scrolls. The construction of the frame is also typical of such chairs, with rear legs that are continuous with the stiles, and side and front seat rails tenoned into the tops of the front legs.237 Given the chair’s documented
Newport origin, its more distinctive characteristics may be helpful in assigning other Queen Anne easy chairs to Newport. In his catalogue entry for the Gardner chair, Morrison H. Heckscher identified these as the high arch of the crest, the largeness of the front feet, and the unchamfered rear legs. Other potential Newport characteristics are the prominent ring on the side stretchers and the downward-sloping profile of the wings (fig.
52).238 A strikingly similar chair in a private collection has a strong Rhode Island provenance (fig. 53). Although the chair has lost its front feet, it has the same arched chest, unchamfered rear legs, downward-sloping wing profile, and prominent side stretcher turning. The two chairs also have the same medial and rear stretchers, with swelled centers and “arrow-shaped” ends capped with two ring turnings (one small and the other more prominent). Also sharing all of the above characteristics is a second easy
236 Essex Registry of Deeds, book 83, leaf 123. Cited in Frank A. Gardner, “The Burrill, Burrell Family of Essex County, Mass.,” Essex Institute Historical Collections 52 (1916), 56.
237 For a second type of seat construction found on New England easy chairs, see the catalogue entry 6 of this master’s thesis.
238 I am indebted to Patricia Kane, Friends of American Arts Curator of American Decorative Arts, Yale University Art Gallery, for sharing her thoughts on Rhode Island stretchers, and to Erik Gronning, Vice President, Senior Specialist American Furniture & Decorative Arts, Sotheby’s, for sharing his ideas on the wing profile of Newport easy chairs.
chair thought to have originally been owned by Godfrey Malbone Jr. (1724–1785), and now in the collection of the Preservation Society of Newport (PSNC.1716a-b) (fig. 54).
Another similarity between this example and the Gardner chair are their pad feet, the backs of which have sharply delineated disks.
With the exception of its back panel, the Gardner chair is covered in an “Irish- stitch” pattern, embroidered on linen with a worsted crewel yarn. The woman who executed the once vibrantly colored needlework probably stitched the individual panels on an embroidery frame and then had Gardner mount them on the chair.239 The visible areas of the chair’s cushion were covered in the same flame-stitch, whereas on the inconspicuous side and bottom panels, an embossed worsted fabric was substituted. The embroidered back panel of the chair depicts a whimsical landscape featuring rolling hills, swimming ducks, flying birds, leaping deer, and a shepherd tending his sheep (fig. 55).240 It is worked in crewel on a linen ground using what today is called a Roumanian
couching stitch. Both the stitch and the composition of the needlework are related to a group of 1750s embroidered pictures from Boston, where seventeenth- and eighteenth- century girls were often sent to complete their educations.241 A Massachusetts easy chair in the Bayou Bend Collection retains a flame-stitch cover very similar to that of the
239 Boston upholsterer Samuel Grant stuffed “7 Seats covd wth needle work” for the Scollary family in 1756.
See Brock Jobe, “The Boston Upholstery Trade,” 72.
240 The two inches that are missing from the bottom of the embroidered back panel may be the result of the needlework having frayed.
241 Object file (50.228.3), American Wing, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY.
Gardner chair, but its back panel is covered with a red worsted fabric rather than with embroidery.242
The only area of foundation upholstery visible on the Gardner chair is that of its seat frame, which is supported by eight strips of webbing tacked to the tops of the seat rails (fig. 56). In addition to the three strips running from front to back and the three strips running from side to side, interwoven in the typical lattice pattern, diagonal strips were used to provide additional support. The webbing is twill-weave with a brown herringbone pattern. This is unusual in that, prior to 1800, plain-weave webbing was by far more common than twill. Also atypical is the three-chevron pattern of the Gardner chair’s twill, since earlier twills were generally simple twills or single-chevron twills (fig.
57).243 The chair’s coarsely woven linen sackcloth is also visible, and is tacked to the top surface of the seat rails over the webbing. As with the Malbone chair, this was covered with a layer of marsh grass, which is visible through the loose weave of the sackcloth.
Evidence of the Gardner chair’s original ornamental trimming is also well
preserved. Unlike the Malbone chair, which was finished with only a flat woven tape, the Gardner chair was trimmed with both tape and cord.244 The upholsterer sewed tape over the cord to create a raised border that encircles the tops of the arm cones, runs up the top edges the arm and wing panels, and forms a false crest (fig. 58). The Malbone chair has a similar false crest, but on that example the upholsterer created the same effect using flat-
242 David Warren, Bayou Bend: American Furniture, Paintings and Silver from the Bayou Bend Collection (Houston: Museum of Fine Arts, 1793), 50–51. See also, Morrison H. Heckscher, “18th-Century American Upholstery Techniques,” 103.
243 Milnes, Development of Furniture Webbing, 8–11. In the course his study of webbing, Milnes found only one example of a three-chevron twill dating from the second half of the eighteenth century.
244 Another easy chair trimmed with both tape and cord is a Massachusetts example in the Brooklyn Museum of Art. See “Wing Chair,” accession number 32.38, Collections Database, Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, NY, http://www.brooklynmuseum.org/.
sewn tape (see catalogue entry 6, fig. 60). Another similarity between the Gardner and Malbone chairs is the use of flat tape behind the arm cones and along the bottom of the side and front seat rails. Tape was also used along the front edge of the Gardner chair’s arm cones, disappearing beneath the seat cushion. On the front seat rail, the tape
continues only as far as the inner knee brackets.245 The tape on the side rails is unusual in that it was applied in two layers. The first layer is a green silk with a yellow weft thread, on which is centered a narrow strip of black tape, probably originally silver in color (fig.
59). The upholsterers of both the Gardner and Malbone chairs used polished iron nails to affix the tape on the seat rails and arm cones. These have cast heads and shanks like those of brass nails, and would have had a similar sheen.246 Tape was also used to conceal the seams of the Gardner chair’s cushion, which were raised to produce the same effect as cord.247
One of the most invaluable aspects of the Gardner chair is that it has retained its original shape, providing an accurate record of typical eighteenth-century upholstery profiles. While its exterior surfaces are relatively streamlined, with the fabric of the back panel and the exterior wing and arm panels pulled tightly over the frame, its inside surfaces provided a comfortably padded environment for the sitter. This makes perfect sense, considering that these chairs were thought to be used primarily by the elderly and the infirm. The generous amount of stuffing used, still held firmly in place, is especially
245 Heckscher, “18th-Century American Upholstery Techniques,” 103.
246 Passeri and Trent, “Two New England Queen Anne Easy Chairs,” 28A.
247 Heckscher, “18th-Century American Upholstery Techniques,” 103.
evident in the rounded profile of the interior wings. The cushion, too, retains its original form, with a height of over four inches.248
Construction Notes
Side stretchers are joined to the front leg with a square tenon and pinned once; tenoned into rear leg and pegged once. The medial stretcher is joined to the side stretchers with round tenons. The rear stretcher is joined to the rear legs with round tenons. There is a visible shoulder on the proper left rear stretcher where it joins the leg.
Incisions/Marks
Signed in pencil on the back of crest rail: “Gardner Junr Newport May / 1758 / W”
Woods
Primary: walnut (front legs, stretchers); Secondary: maple (rear stiles, crest rail, seat rail)249
Measurements
Height: 46 3/8"; height (seat): 12"
Width (front feet): 32"; width (seat back): 24"; width (seat front): 30"; width (arms): 32
3/8"
Depth (seat): 22 3/4"; Depth (feet): 25 7/8" 250
248 Ibid.,, 98, 100.
249 Heckscher, American Furniture, 72.
250 Measurements are taken from Heckscher, American Furniture, 72.
Provenance
Keech or Keach family, Newport, Rhode Island, c. 1850, and later Burlington, Vermont;
sold to an unknown individual, Connecticut, 1926; Ginsburg and Levy, Inc., New York, 1926; sold to Mrs. J. Insley Blair (née Natalie Knowlton, 1884–1951), Tuxedo Park, New York; given to The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1950.251
251 “RIF768,” RIFA, YUAG.p