Side Chair (c. 1775): Art, History and Details

Side Chair (c. 1775) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Eliphalet Chapin (American, 1741–1807).

The work and its context

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

Before becoming one of the best known Connecticut furniture makers of the late 1700s, Eliphalet Chapin worked in New York City and Philadelphia. His furniture shows evidence of that experience. For example, the back of this chair has a splat design found on New York pieces, while the untapered rear legs and the shell carving on the crest rail are typical of Philadelphia workmanship. The use of cherry, however, is characteristic of Connecticut furniture. This chair comes from a set recorded in Chapin's account book as having been supplied to Ebenezer Grant to form part of the dowry of his daughter Anne, who married the Reverend John Marsh of Wethersfield, Connecticut, on December 6, 1775. The set was owned by their descendants until 1986.

Object facts

• Title: Side Chair
• Date: c. 1775
• Creator attribution: Eliphalet Chapin (American, 1741–1807)
• Culture: America, Connecticut, East Windsor, 18th century
• Type: Furniture and woodwork
• Technique: cherry
• Dimensions: Overall: 96.8 x 59.1 x 51.1 cm (38 1/8 x 23 1/4 x 20 1/8 in.)
• Collection: Furniture
• Department: Decorative Art and Design
• Accession number: 1986.81

Collection credit

Leonard C. Hanna Jr. Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Turner, Evan H. “The Year in Review for 1986.” The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 74, no. 2 (February 1987): 38–79.

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.