Side Chair (c. 1770): Art, History and Details

Side Chair (c. 1770) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

The middle section, or splat, of this chair back, with its Gothic pointed arches, may be related to the style invented by the English cabinetmaker Thomas Chippendale. English chairs of this pattern are known, so the design probably originated there and was transmitted to this side of the Atlantic, perhaps by means of an imported example. This chair comes from a set made for Thomas and Elizabeth Edwards of Philadelphia, a furniture making center famous for its carved ornament. This chair features several finely and naturalistically carved details.

Object facts

• Title: Side Chair
• Date: c. 1770
• Culture: America, Pennsylvania, Philadelphia
• Type: Furniture and woodwork
• Technique: mahogany
• Dimensions: Overall: 97 x 60 x 56.9 cm (38 3/16 x 23 5/8 x 22 3/8 in.)
• Collection: Furniture
• Department: Decorative Art and Design
• Accession number: 1985.58

Collection credit

Leonard C. Hanna Jr. Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Turner, Evan H. “The Year in Review for 1985.” The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 73, no. 2 (February 1986): 26–71.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.