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Pair Side Chairs with Lyre Back

$30,000per set

£22,747.55per set

€26,273.16per set

CA$42,091.83per set

A$46,889.36per set

CHF 24,733.40per set

MX$568,548per set

NOK 314,644.50per set

SEK 293,111.28per set

DKK 196,191.90per set

About the Item

“I know of no other chair like the single [sic] ‘lyre back’ one. . . . I certainly recognize it as a Boston chair considering all the individual elements, but the combination is particularly elegant.” So wrote noted scholar of Boston furniture Page Talbott when a set of four chairs of this design originally surfaced in the 1980s. Although the existence of four chairs in a specific pattern might imply that the chairs were originally part of a larger set, no additional chairs of this form have appeared in the intervening years. The lyre became a popular motif during the Neo-Classical period, and is frequently encountered as the back splat of klismos chairs, in no example more familiar than in a group of Duncan Phyfe chairs (for example, see Berry B. Tracy et al., 19th-Century America: Furniture and Other Decorative Arts, exhib. cat. [New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1970], no. 27 illus.). In the present example, however, the cabinetmaker has created a substantially larger and bolder lyre—and a noticeably larger chair—more in keeping with the grander and more archaeological approach of the mid-to-late 1820s, in contrast to the more delicate Phyfe sensitivity of the 1810s. Indeed, these chairs represent both a scale and a level of refinement that one rarely encounters in Boston chairs of this time, except for a remarkable and monumental pair taken from Thomas King’s Modern Style of Cabinet Work Exemplified (1829), in the collection of the Detroit Institute of Arts, Michigan (formerly collection of Hirschl & Adler, FAPG 19411D; photograph in Hirschl & Adler archives). The grander scale of these chairs, coupled also with the beautifully carved front legs and front and side seat rails boldly carved in an egg-and-dart motif, suggests that their cabinetmaker was looking to one of the many English design books that appeared during the Regency/William IV era, but the discovery in the private collection of the late Savannah, Georgia, dealer, Francis McNairy, of a set of six French side chairs with nearly identical lyre backsplats, and the appearance of a pair of side chairs with variant front legs and slight differences in the details of the lyre (catalogue, sale, Neal Auction Co., New Orleans, Louisiana, September 11-12, 2010, no. 365 illus.) strongly suggest that the origin of the design may have been in a French rather than an English pattern book of the period. Overscaled lyres, albeit in a rather different form, are also seen in a series of three Boston work tables attributed to Thomas Seymour (see Robert D. Mussey, Jr., The Furniture Masterworks of John & Thomas Seymour [Salem, Mass.: Peabody Essex Museum, 2003], pp. 318 illus. in color, 319, as well as Albert Sack, The New Fine Points of Furniture: Early American [New York: Crown Publishers, 1993], p. 310 illus.), and also in various card tables, including a pair (Mussey, pp. 362 illus., 363) and a single (formerly in the collection of Hirschl & Adler Galleries, FAPG 14501D; see photograph in Hirschl & Adler archives).

Dimensions:

Height: 34 in (86.36 cm)Width: 19 in (48.26 cm)Depth: 22.25 in (56.52 cm)

Sold As:

Set of 2

Style:

Neoclassical (Of the Period)

Materials and Techniques:

Mahogany

Place of Origin:

United States

Period:

1820-1829

Date of Manufacture:

c. 1820

Condition:

Replacements made: One chair has had one glue block replaced and the other chair has had two glue blocks replaced. Repaired: There has been a veneer repair to the top of the back leg on the proper left side of one chair. The other chair has had a small veneer repair beneath the lyre. Reupholstered. Excellent overall. Cleaned and French polished.

Seller Location:

New York, NY

Reference Number:

Seller: FAPG 20849D.001-21stDibs: LU903241718422

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