2017.42.7
Side chair
Artists
Artist Unidentified (American)
;
Maker Unidentified
Title
Side chair
Creation Date
1680-1710
Century
late 17th-early 18th century
Dimensions
38 1/4 x 19 1/2 x 16 1/2 in. (97.16 x 49.53 x 41.91 cm)
Object Type
furniture
Creation Place
North America, United States, New York
Medium and Support
painted cherry
Credit Line
Gift of Donald E. Hare, '51 and Ann F. Hare
Copyright
Public Domain
Accession Number
2017.42.7
This side chair made in seventeenth-century New York (then New Amsterdam) represents Dutch furniture traditions. In the Netherlands, stoelendraaiers (or turners) specialized in furniture made of lathe-turned parts, readily assembled with dowel joints, and affordable to a wide range of citizens. Exceedingly popular, this seating furniture appears in paintings of Dutch interiors, including Heemskerck’s The Doctor’s Surgery on view in this gallery. Made of cherry, the chair’s glossy black paint simulates a costly exotic wood such as ebony which would have been imported from Africa or Asia. This chair also provides a marked contrast to the Joined Great Chair seen nearby because stoelendraaiers did not use its labor-intensive mortice-and-tenon-joint construction.
Additional Media
3/4 view/detail
side viewdetail