AFA Summer 2021

2021 Antiques & Fine Art 93 they were sold individually (Fig.1). On account of the publicity the sale received, along with the spirited and competitive bidding during the sale, the three chairs were each given the soubriquet “Reifsnyder chair.” Over time, any Philadelphia compassed chair with blocked front seat rails from any set came to be referred to as a “Reifsnyder chair.” A black walnut side chair in the collection of the Dietrich American Foundation is one of four extant chairs from another mid-eighteenth-century set of Philadelphia compassed side chairs—referred to in the period as “compass bottom’d” — also distinguished by blocked front seat rails containing shells (Fig. 2). While researching objects related to the Foundation’s chair, we documented five closely related sets of side chairs with the distinguishing feature of blocked front rails. 1 The chairs in all five sets have compassed backs and seats, blocked front seat rails with a carved shell, shells and volutes carved on the crest rail, carving on the knees, and solid, S-curved back splats. Variations among the sets include the choice of trifid or claw and ball feet and rear stiles with flat or rounded faces. Three of the sets have egg and tongue pattern carving on the ovolo element of the plinth supporting the splat. The construction of the chairs in all five sets is similar and closely follows that of the majority of compassed chair made in Philadelphia during the middle of the eighteenth century. The front and side seat rail boards are oriented horizontally. The side seat rails are tenoned to the front seat rail and tenoned through the rear stiles and wedged. The rear set rail is tenoned to the rear stiles and the joints are double pegged. The front legs are attached to the seat rails with round tenons cut at the back corner of the top of the legs and fit to holes bored in the seat frame. The rear stiles have laminations for width at both the inside and outside curves. The laminations are often, but not always, the pieces cut from the stiles while creating the curved outline. The stiles are tenoned to the crest rail. The splat pedestal is nailed and glued to the rear seat rail. The splat is tenoned to the pedestal and crest rail. Unlike many compassed chairs made in Philadelphia, on the Dietrich Foundation’s chair, the moulding on the front and side seat rails that retains the loose seat, is carved from the solid timber of the seat rails rather than having been cut from an oversized, assembled loose seat frame. 2 The different sets are interestingly inconsistent in the way this element is handled. One other set has the moulding carved from the solid rails. On three sets, the moulding on the front rail is carved from the solid and the side mouldings are applied. The front and side mouldings on the Reifsnyder set are applied. During the survey of the Foundation’s side chair, numerous examples of chairs from four of the related sets, including the set the Foundation’s chair belonged to, were found throughout the available auction house records, antique dealer advertisements, and scholarly publications. However, we were intrigued to discover none of the three chairs from the Reifsnyder catalogue had appeared in the marketplace since 1929, nor had they been published since. Locating their whereabouts became a challenge to the survey team. A singular design feature not seen in any of the other four sets that distinguishes the chairs in the Reifsnyder catalogue is the design of the shell on the crest. There are six convex and five concave lobes with a concave lobe at the center. The common design of pecten shells on eighteenth-century Philadelphia furniture consists of five convex lobes and four concave lobes with a central convex lobe (Fig. 3). This fact helped us determine that the true “Reifsnyder chairs” did not belong to any of the four sets of related chairs. We found that the three Reifsnyder chairs descended in the families of the original purchasers and now reside in public collections. In 1997, two of the chairs purchased by Matthew Scott Sloan (1881– 1951) at the sale, entered the collection of the Brooklyn Museum, as a gift of his daughter Lidie Lane