Mahogany Compass-Seat Roundabout Chair
Noteworthy Sale
LEIGH KENO AMERICAN ANTIQUES
Sold to a private collector
Mahogany Compass-Seat Roundabout Chair
Boston, Massachusetts, 1740–1750
H. 30-7/8”, W. 28”, D. 24”
Courtesy of Leigh Keno American Antiques
This Boston roundabout chair, with its leaf-carved crest rail, pierced openwork splat, cupid’s bow splat shoes, claw-and-ball front foot, and full-pad rear feet, is among the most sophisticated examples yet discovered. The design of the splat shoes, deeply cut, rounded scrolled knee brackets, and webbed feet relate to a small group of late baroque chairs made in the 1730s and 1740s in Boston. Unusual is the crest rail carving and the full-pad rear feet instead of the simple turned button feet of most roundabout chairs.
For a study of the Boston chair-making industry in the first half of the eighteenth century, see Keno, Freund, and Miller, “The Very Pink of the Mode: Boston Georgian Chairs, Their Export and Their Influence” in American Furniture (1996); and Freund and Keno, “The Making and Marketing of Boston Seating Furniture in the Late Baroque Style” in American Furniture (1998).
