Easy Chair

Maker Unknown, American

Additional Title(s)

Massachusetts Easy Chair

Collections

ClassificationsDECORATIVE ARTS

Date1750-1760

Mediumwalnut with maple rear legs, silk

Dimensions46 1/2 x 35 1/2 x 25 1/2 in. (118.1 x 90.2 x 64.8 cm.)

DescriptionMassachusetts easy chair upholstered with 20th-century reproduction fabric

Credit LineThe Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens. Gail-Oxford Collection

Status

On view

Label TextAccording to 18th-century household inventories, easy chairs, known today as “wing chairs,” were often placed in bedchambers and upholstered in imported fabrics that matched the room’s curtains and bed hangings. Introduced to America in the 1720s, they were frequently reserved for the most important members of the family, the elderly, or the infirm. This chair, with its relatively flat crest rail, wings that slope down to inverted cone-shaped arms, trapezoidal seat with rounded corners, turned stretchers, and cabriole legs with raised pad feet, is typical of easy chairs made in New England in the mid-18th century. The upholstery is a 20th-century reproduction of an 18th-century fabric.

Object number2016.11.6