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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Tim Naylor, post: 3391833, member: 18098&quot;]Actually, that Sumpter Priddy &quot;Chipstone&quot; Charles Belt is a later furniture maker than the Charles Belt (c.1740-1775) referred to by Gregory Weidman in Maryland Furniture 1740-1940, and the one to whom your armchair is attributed.&nbsp; They were obviously almost certainly related, but probably not directly.&nbsp; When the earlier Charles Belt died in 1775, his brother sold his estate and there doesn&#039;t seem to be any sign of him having had any children.&nbsp; Except for inheriting his home at Pleasant Hill in Anne Arundel County (near Annapolis) from his father, there is very little information on the earlier Charles Belt.</p><p><br /></p><p>Just for the record, I&#039;m just making observations based on other peoples observations.&nbsp; Weidman was the first that I know of to attribute these chairs to Belt (see below).&nbsp; Later on, Williamsburg&#039;s &quot;Southern Furniture&quot;, while acknowledging these chairs were from the Southern Maryland area, pretty much dismissed Weidman&#039;s theory, based on family connections or lack thereof.&nbsp; It wasn&#039;t until the Waters Family chairs sold at Brunk Auctions in 2013, with no mention of a Charles Belt attribution, that things really started to make sense.&nbsp; Previously, all of these &quot;Belt&quot; chairs were attributed to Montgomery County and/or Prince George&#039;s County.&nbsp; Between 1750 and 1770, both were much more rural than Anne Arundel County, home to burgeoning Annapolis.&nbsp; Maybe Charles Belt did start out closer to his brother&#039;s home in Montgomery County and eventually Price George&#039;s County.&nbsp; But the Waters Family was from Anne Arundel County and Charles Belt lived in Anne Arundel County from at least from 1761 on.</p><p><br /></p><p>Labelled or signed colonial furniture from Maryland is almost unheard of and Charles Belt (c.1740-1775) is no exception.&nbsp; I&#039;m assuming the primary reason for attrib[ATTACH=full]301698[/ATTACH] uting this &quot;school of&quot; chairmaking to him is because, before the population explosion after the Revolution, there simply weren&#039;t many makers outside of Annapolis, and Belt is one of those documented few.&nbsp; That would change precipitously by 1780-1790.&nbsp; But for the time being, the odds of Charles Belt, chair maker from a very well-to-do family, making Chippendale chairs for other well-to-do Anne Arundel County landowners, seems a very likely scenario.</p><p><br /></p><p>I&#039;ve attached too many images of some of the examples that I think begin to illustrate the stylistic progression of the &quot;Belt&quot; chairs, from almost pure Queen Anne, to a few hybrids in-between, to a finally realized pure Chippendale form like your armchair.</p><p><br /></p><p>Some of the structural details that seem to be common in many if not all of these chairs are the accentuated &quot;Cupid&#039;s bow&quot; crest rail of course, the accentuated and &quot;pointed&quot; ears on the crest rails, the edges of the scalloping of the shells being perfectly concentric, the scratch-beaded edge of the crest rail and stiles, the through-tenon construction, the octagonal chamfering of the rear legs, the exaggerated rake of the rear legs, the &quot;double bumps&quot; on the Queen Anne splats, the deep top margins above the pierce-work (below the crest rail) on the Chippendale splats, the wider (or taller) than usual seat rails, the overly &quot;suppressed&quot; balls (even more so than on Philadelphia counterparts) on the feet of the Chippendale examples, triangular yellow pine glue blocks (when original), yellow pine slip seats (when original), and corner glue and knee blocks being held in with original rosehead nails.&nbsp; My guess is that a lot of these visually different chairs might well have had the same shop template used in the cutting out of stock components such as crest rails and rear legs.</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p>[ATTACH=full]301528[/ATTACH]</p><p>[ATTACH=full]301559[/ATTACH][ATTACH=full]301529[/ATTACH] [ATTACH=full]301530[/ATTACH]</p><p>[ATTACH=full]301698[/ATTACH]</p><p><br /></p><p>[ATTACH=full]301562[/ATTACH]</p><p>[ATTACH=full]301566[/ATTACH]</p><p>[ATTACH=full]301567[/ATTACH]</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p>[ATTACH=full]301569[/ATTACH]</p><p><br /></p><p>[ATTACH=full]301571[/ATTACH]</p><p>[ATTACH=full]301700[/ATTACH][/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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