The generous gift of early New England and Delaware Valley furniture from the collection of Anne H. and Frederick Vogel III greatly enhances the Museum’s remarkable holdings of late seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century furniture forms. This rare arm chair from Boston is an example of the significance of the Vogels’ collection.

The rarity of this easy chair stems in part from the high cost of fine textiles in early colonial America. The resulting expense of padded and stitched foundations and finely finished textile coverings thus placed most fully upholstered furniture out of the reach of all but the wealthiest colonial households. The eighteenth-century flamestitch needlework on this chair is not the original, but it follows the pattern and form of luxurious upholstery of the highest style early eighteenth-century seating furniture. While no Philadelphia upholstered easy chairs of comparable early date are known to survive, over twenty from Boston, dating from 1695 to 1725, have been identified and are highly regarded for their historical significance, refined proportions, and rarity. This chair is thought to be among the earliest of only three surviving examples with turned feet. The angular, boldly raked stance of the chair’s back, together with its arched back crest, distinctive scroll-form arms, deep and accommodating seat, and elaborately sawn-shaped seat-rail combine to make it one of the most splendid and ambitious examples from this important and stylistically influential group of early American chairs. Jack L. Lindsey, from Philadelphia Museum of Art: Gifts in Honor of the 125th Anniversary (2002), pp. 24-25.