Very Rare Brown Finished Low-Back Windsor Settee, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Circa 1770

With only two seats, this Philadelphia low-back settee with blunt-tip arrow feet is one of the rarest forms of Windsor furniture. A closely related example is the in the collection of Winterthur Museum (acc. no. 82.116) (see Nancy Goyne Evans, American Windsor Chairs, (New York: Hudson Hills Press in association with the Henry Francis du Pont Winterthur Museum, 1996), p.  99, fig. 1-73).  Another sold at Sotheby's, New York, Important Americana, Including Property from the Collection of Foster and Muriel McCarl, September 27, 2012, sale 8880, lot 116.  A third example lacking a shaped seat is illustrated in Charles Santore, The Windsor Style in America: A Pictorial Study of the History and Regional Characteristics of the Most Popular Furniture Form of Eighteenth-Century America, 1730-1830, (Philadelphia, PA: Running Press, 1981), p. 149, no. 182.