AFA Summer 2021

2021 Antiques & Fine Art 95 Sloan McBurney (1914–1996). The Reifsnyder provenance for the chairs is not mentioned on the museum’s website, but in an annotated copy of the Reifsnyder sale catalogue, “S. S. Mathew” is noted as the buyer of lot 655 (Fig. 4). In articles before the Reifsnyder sale and in the catalogue of the sale, the chairs were described as being made of black walnut, but the two chairs in the Brooklyn Museum are made of black cherry, a rare use of that wood species in high style Philadelphia chairs made during the middle of the eighteenth century. 3 Locating the third chair proved to be more elusive. But several years after the survey and treatment of the Dietrich American Foundation side chair had been completed, I was surprised to come upon a black cherry Philadelphia compassed side chair with a blocked front identical to the chairs in the Brooklyn Museum during a tour of the new Leslie P. and George H. Hume American Furniture Study Center. It had recently arrived and had not yet found a home in the racks of chair storage at the Center. When the chair went up on the Yale University Art Gallery’s website several months later, it was listed as having been given to the Gallery in 2018 by Julie and Ted Leisenring, B.A. 1949. The provenance cites Howard Reifsnyder as a previous owner of the chair and specifies that lot 653 in the Reifsnyder catalogue was sold to Julia du Pont Andrews Bissell (1907–1994) and Alfred E. Bissell, Wilmington, Delaware. In the annotated catalogue the chair is noted as being purchased by “Mrs. P. Bissell” (Fig. 5). The three “Reifsnyder chairs” were now accounted for. 4 While discerning the disposition and current location of the three chairs in the Reifsnyder catalogue might be thought to be peripheral to the study of the side chair in the collection of the Dietrich American Foundation, it hints at the many other intriguing discoveries that were made during the furniture survey and how this work has contributed to the history of furniture making in colonial America.  1. Besides the Foundation’s and the Reifsnyder sets, the other sets are represented by the following single chairs, 1. https://www.sothebys. com/en/auctions/ecatalogue/2017/americana-collection-george-s-parker-ii-caxambas-foundation-n09605/lot.2084.html, 2. https://www. christies.com/lot/lot-the-powel-griffitts-family-queen-anne-carved-walnut-6188145/?from=salesummary&intObjectID=6188145&lid=1 3. https://www.christies.com/en/lot/lot-6097333. 2. For a discussion on the construction of Philadelphia compassed chairs, see Alan Miller, “Flux in Design in Early Eighteenth-Century Philadelphia Furniture, American Furniture, 2014, Ed. Luke Beckerdite, Milwaukee, WI. 3. The Brooklyn Museum chairs can be accessed here: https://www.brooklynmuseum.org/opencollection/objects/2401. 4. The Yale University Art Gallery chair can be accessed here: https://artgallery.yale.edu/collections/objects/276831. A fourth chair from this set was bequeathed to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 2016: https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/20587?searchF ield=All&sortBy=Relevance&ft=2016.797.12&offset=0&rpp=20&pos=1. This article is the fourth in a series featuring the Dietrich American Foundation’s collection, with an eye toward presenting the collection’s strength in furniture. We are delighted to present these articles as a type of crowd sourcing exercise, where responses and information shared by readers can inform the research. New information gleaned will be provided over the course of the series. As is always the Foundation’s mission, we are excited to share findings and stories about people, places, and history that are revealed through our research. Contact details are in the author bio below. For information about the Dietrich American Foundation, visit https://dietrichamericanfoundation.org. Christopher Storb is a furniture conservator, woodworking historian, and wood artist. Please send comments and related research to cstorb@gmail.com, or call 610.212.5528.

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