Featured Please help identify these chairs

Hi all! I found these chairs a few years ago at an estate sale, but don't know much about it. No manufacture name on them.
Thought of John Jelliff style parlor/armchairs, 1870s-1890s, but no lady face on them.
Please comment if you know anything about it.

 

Walnut armchairs ca. 1870, Renaissance Revival style. Not Jelliff, but very good quality. Great score!

 

What beauties.

Debora

 

I don't think I could actually sit in one of those. I'd feel intimidated.

 

Looks like a couple of Prudent Mallard chairs out of New Orleans to me.

https://www.hnoc.org/virtual/goods-every-description/prudent-mallard

 

I'm thinking more northeastern U.S. The truth is that there were dozens of makers in both areas, and the chairs could be from any one of them. The chairs are clearly by the same craftsmen, but the crests on each chair are not the same. Not quite different enough to say that they are definitely from different parlor sets, but maybe! In any case these are treasures.

 

Yes it's very possible these could have been made and sold farther north. The back story on Prudent Mallard is that the furniture was made in Europe in sections / pieces, shipped to the U.S. and assembled and upholstered. It has been said that Mallard's own shop in the New Orleans French Quarter held mostly upholstery fabric and samples. I'm not sure where it was all assembled. This type of furniture appears world wide, so Mallard's company was not the only company to do such work. It tends to give consistency to the furniture, shown by the way the 2 chairs "match" to each other excellently, only the top finials differ.

A Mallard finial is generally an oval without carving in it.

 

Yes, Mallard tended to employ cabachons (“eggs”) at the peak of the crests of pieces sold with his name on them. Said cabachons were often decorated with a ribbon. He also tended to use furniture feet topped with rounded dentils. The jury may be forever out on just how much assembly and upholstery was done at Mallard’s “ware room;” he clearly felt comfortable labeling pieces as if they were his own.
He was also evidently acquainted with New York manufacturer Alexander Roux, and may well have distributed Roux’s products as well.
My guess is that the chairs are by the same manufacturer but spaced months or maybe a year apart.

 

I never thought to call them that, but they surely are, thanks.