Featured Earliest Known Piece of American Furniture?

This chair below, once thought to have been built in Charleston SC is now almost certainly proven to have been built in coastal Virginia. How did this researcher begin his quest to find out for sure? The cherry primary wood, it always bothered him that the attribution & date for Charleston was wrong because cherry was not used in early Charleston furniture. This turned cherry chair was built in the Chesapeake region Virginia, C 1640-1660 and is in fact the earliest known piece of southern furniture extant. Indeed, this chair could very well be the earliest known piece of American furniture ever.
It sold at Christies a few years ago when it was still a "Charleston" chair to the Houston Museum for what is now a real bargain, 288k. If the recent research is anywhere near correct & i think it is, this chair is now in the priceless category. The feet have lost a couple inches but that's "normal" for a piece this old.

" The earliest turned chairs of Plimoth and Massachusetts Colonies tend to be dated in contemporary scholarship 1640-1660. Should they happen to date on the later end of that period and the Virginia chair under study should happen to date on the earlier end of its spectrum, then it would likely be the earliest American chair. This is expressed as a potential for the object, not as a conclusive fact. In fact, the writer anticipates that more seventeenth century chairs will emerge with a Virginia attribution."

http://www.mesdajournal.org/2014/provenance-profile-rediscovery-earliest-southern-chair/

 

"...almost certainly proven..."

Wonder about how wide the gap is between those weasel-words and simply "is."

But even "is" has been disputed, recalling the widely-publicized comments of scumbag W.J. Clinton on the meaning of "is."

 

http://www.pilgrimhallmuseum.org/ce_funiture.htm

Since I'm from Massachusetts, I know that we consider the William Brewster chair to be the earliest, dating to about the same time frame, 1630.



William Brewster chair and Peregrine White cradle.

 

LOL, Hey Bev, YES! " America's Home Town" could be in danger here on earliest piece of furniture extant! Let the drama begin!
Actually, i got no dog in that fight as i am a Washington DC kid but hey, i have been known to stir the pot a little. Don't get me wrong, the Carver, Bradford & Brewster chairs are very impressive early chairs & Pilgrim Hall/ Plimoth Plantation is fortunate to have preserved so many things from long ago.

Springfld, yeah, i hear you. The thing is, the "bible" on early american furniture, Wallace Nutting's Furniture Treasury, first published in 1928, I am guessing at least one third or more of it has been proven wrong in his research. That's the thing, as time goes along new evidence is discovered about things from long ago and, with the the internet/information age upon us, it's much easier today to do research than ever before. This is why most scholars today when publishing new research add a caveat to their work, they know as time passes new evidence will emerge.

 

"Been known to stir the pot a little?"

That's an understatement! )

Seriously, a very interesting article about a fantastic piece. Wasn't there also a story about somebody finding a 17-th century cupboard on the back porch of some house in Virgina or North Carolina?

 

LOL, YES! It was used to store chicken feed on someones back porch in Va.! Let me see if i can find a pic.
Court Cupboard C. 1650, James or York County Virginia. One of only two southern court cupboards known to exist. The other southern court cupboard was in Nutting's collection and donated to Wadsworth Atheneum.

 

It's a beaut. Loved that story. I wonder how much it would set you back?

 

Yeah well, you know how it is, once upon a time that cupboard displayed the finest silver, linen, etc. that the lady of the house had at her disposal. A few centuries later & it's on the back porch storing chicken feed, quite a come down huh.

Value i would guess is priceless, it's exhibited at MESDA in Winston Salem NC in it's own room now and, it has regained it's once regal status.

 

I was on the edge of my seat reading that!!!

KingofThings, I just noticed your post, edge of your seat? How come?

 

Just being silly but I did enjoy all of this.

 

OK! Thought you might have added to some of the north VS south drama that has taken place in the past.
The gauntlet was thrown down in 1949, when Joseph Downs, curator of the American Wing at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, addressing Colonial Williamsburg's Antique Forum said " that nothing of artistic merit was made south of Baltimore".
BAM! It was on like a neckbone in the south land (no, i don't know what southerners mean exactly when they say that but it's not a good thing). With that, the crusade to prove Downs and all other Yankee snobs wrong was on. Frank Horton, the visionary antique dealer & founder of MESDA (museum of early southern decorative arts) got much of the money to start MESDA from the RJ Reynolds family. It opened in 1965 & the rest as they say, is history.
Horton is the guy who found that court cupboard above on a back porch loaded up with chicken feed.