A Very Fine and Rare Pair of Federal Carved and Figured Mahogany Side Chairs, Probably by Thomas Seymour, possibly with John Seymour, Boston, Massachusetts, Circa 1808-1812

Family descent from Governor Levi Lincoln, Jr. (1782-1868), Worcester, Massachusetts;

Skinner, Inc., Boston, Massachusetts, American Furniture & Decorative Arts, June 5, 2005, lot 121.

This pair of chairs may represent a sixth variation of the Seymours curved diamond backs. They bear a close affiliation to an example illustrated in Robert Mussey, Jr. The Furniture Masterworks of John & Thomas Seymour, (Salem, Massachusetts: Peabody Essex Museum distributed by University Press of New England, 2003), p. 388-9, no. 127. In this instance the Seymours used and inlaid plaque of figured mahogany on the crest rail and omitted the curved supports beneath the center of the crest rail. These omission and changes would make the chair less costly to produce and may represent a less expensive alternative offered by the Seymours.

Robert Mussey, Jr. states “it seems most likely that the Seymours had actual imported English examples of related design from which to work. No English-trained chairmaker of high skill is known to have immigrated to Boston who might have brought the pattern with him or who might have worked as a journeyman for them. No other Boston chairmaker appears to have attempted another interpretation of this complex and obviously expensive form. The curving crest rail with its veneered central tablet and curving and tapering reeded sections with the ringturned ends was the most difficult element to make. Note that it is bowed overall for comfort and, especially, the turned details of the "roller ends," which are turned on two different off-center axes. The result is that the rail had to be fixed on the lathe on two successive sets of turning centers. Additional work with spokeshaves and rasps created the rounded shapes on the rear of the rail. The central tablet on the front was veneered, and reeds were worked in using a special jig and a scratch-molding tool. The ends of the crest rail were then doweled into the scrolled top ends of the stiles of the back legs and screwed through from the outside of the legs, and a ring-turned wood button was applied over the screw head (“the roller screw'd through the eye of the scrolls”). The fabrication of the tracery rails of the curving back was nearly as complicated. Each is shaped in three dimensions, reeded on their shafts, leaf-carved at the ends, and with adjacent pairs joined at the center and accurately mortised into the leg stiles and horizontal “stay rails” at compound angles.

Governor Levi Lincoln, Jr. (1782-1868), was born in Worcester, Massachusetts and had a distinguished political career with leadership positions at the local, state and national levels. His preparation began with his father, who had been both a Massachusetts governor and a U.S. Attorney General; his Harvard education; and a legal career. He represented Worcester in both the State Senate and State House of Representatives. He served as Lieutenant Governor and from 1825-34 as Governor of Massachusetts. Later, he was an associate justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Court. After serving in the national Congress, he returned to become the president of the Massachusetts Senate and, subsequently, when he returned to Worcester in 1848, was elected as the city's first mayor. In 1848, Lincoln also hired architect-builder, Elias Carter, well-known for his fine and grand homes, to build him a mansion. He undoubtedly brought the chairs to his new home from his earlier dwelling.