Queen Anne and Chippendale chairs in Delaware

Magazine Antiques, Sept, 2001 by Philip D. Zimmerman

"Written records document furniture makers working in Dover, Odessa, New Castle, and Wilmington, Delaware, throughout the eighteenth century. Windsor seating furniture branded by Sampson Barnet (w c. 1776-1 795) and George Young, working at the end of the century is known, but no labeled or otherwise well-documented framed chairs made in the Queen Anne or Chippendale styles have yet come to light. Nevertheless, chairs with reliable provenances linking them to old Delaware families do survive, and attention to the histories and the design of these chairs yield a core of furniture that may reasonably be called Delaware-made. Although this study is incomplete, findings to date shape our understanding of seating from this region and encourage the search for additional examples and documentation. [1]

In the absence of bills, labels, and other historical evidence of chairmaking, histories of ownership are essential to identifying Delaware seating. Examples from five sets of chairs associated with the Vincent Loockerman family of Dover survive and offer a convenient, and remarkable, starting point. That Loockerman owned five sets of chairs strains credibility until his probate inventory is considered. Proved on September 7, 1785, it describes five different sets in four rooms. [2] All of these chairs remained in the family until the 1960s. When four of the five sets were sold over the next decade or so, their provenances remained intact. Examination of the chairs indicates that three of the sets were probably made in Philadelphia and two were of local origin.

The set of chairs still owned in the Loockerman family provides a logical starting point (see Pl. II). The set is represented by four side chairs and the splat of a fifth. They have solid splats of figured walnut, compass seats (so-called for their rounded seats laid out with a compass), and cabriole front legs with carved feet joined to chamfered rear legs by shaped stretchers. The chairbacks are gently S-shaped to conform to the sitter's body. Shells decorate the crest rails and knees, and volutes mark the bottoms of the leg brackets. All of these features indicate the Queen Anne style except the projecting ears of the crest rail, which are a Chippendale feature. Thus, the chairs were probably made some time after 1744, the date the Loockerman house was built near the center of Dover.

Comparison of these chairs to the range of designs associated with Philadelphia Queen Anne seating demonstrates both dependence and individuality on the part of the maker in the Dover area. The essential features of design and construction lie within the Philadelphia regional idiom, but the shapes of the splat and crest rail, the socklike trifid foot, and the carved details are singular and notably nonurban. The splat, for example, differs from Philadelphia models in having very high ears and a very broad massing near the base. In addition, the edge of the splat is barely chamfered in contrast to the then nearly universal deep chamfers, which create sharp edges and eliminate any visible clue to the thickness of the board. The ears reach outward and horizontally well beyond the usual boundaries. The rear legs are rounded at the back and chamfered at the front, thus combining two common rear-leg treatments. These and other qualities argue for a local origin, possibly Dover itself, where the furniture makers Joh n Bell (w. c. 1757-1768) and John Gordon (w. 1764-1774) are documented as working in 1767. [3]

The local origin of the compass-seat Loockerman chairs becomes more likely in light of the relationships between this set of chairs, a dressing table owned by the Loockermans, and a second set of walnut Queen Anne style chairs owned by the Loockermans. The claw-and-ball foot dressing table, now in the Biggs Museum of American Art in Dover, [4] differs from both sets of chairs but has the same floral pendants below the shells on the knees, carved volutes on the leg brackets, and wide scratch beading outlining elements, all of which indicate that the table was probably made by the same maker as the chairs.

The second set of Loockerman walnut Queen Anne style chairs consists of six side chairs and one armchair, all with square seats (see P1. III). However, as is the case with the dressing table, there are similarities between this set of chairs and the compass-seat chairs. Foremost is the splat, which duplicates the pattern. The stretchers, volute-carved leg brackets, and scratch-beaded outlining are also the same. The set with the square seats differs primarily in its level of decoration: there are no shells on the knees, the shell in the crest rail is simpler, and the legs end in simple pad feet.

The other three sets of chairs with Loockerman associations were made in Philadelphia. The city represented an overland journey of less than ten miles from Dover to the shore of the Delaware River and from thence convenient conveyance upstream. The Loockermans were probably typical of prosperous pre-Revolutionary residents of Delaware in furnishing their houses with a combination of locally made goods and finer wares from Philadelphia. An example of this practice is William Corbit, a prosperous tanner, who furnished his grand house in Cantwell's Bridge (now Odessa), Delaware, which was completed in 1774, with both local and Philadelphia-made furniture. [5]