A black walnut compassed armchair made in Philadelphia c. 1755 was placed on loan earlier this year at Stenton Museum.
The reasons for the loan are varied and are touched upon in auction catalogue essays for related armchairs – including that for the armchair on loan to Stenton – that have appeared in the marketplace since 2006. The other armchairs include an unmarked chair previously in the collection of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, a chair marked III on its seat frame and loose seat at Winterthur, the chair loaned to Stenton, marked IIII on its seat frame and loose seat, a chair marked V on both seat frame and loose seat that sold at Sotheby’s in 2006, a chair marked VIII on its seat frame and I on its loose seat at Winterthur, along with a chair only known from its illustration in John Walker, Experts Choice: 1000 Years of the Art Trade, New York 1983. As one of the pair of chairs at Winterthur is marked VIII, it is assumed the set was comprised of at least eight armchairs. Sets of mid-eighteenth armchairs are highly unusual but are known to exist. The armchair on loan to Stenton, along with the other armchairs mentioned above, represent the only known survival of a of mid-eighteenth century suite of compassed armchairs. The armchairs are oversize compared to typical chairs of the form – four inches taller than normal, with the additional height added to the splat – and measurably broader through the seat as well.
Historians are not alone in crafting and studying history. At times, owners of objects also assert their reverence and veneration for objects and revel their beliefs and ideas about articles that have descended through a family.
Veneration of ownership is especially strong in the case of the armchair on loan to Stenton. Four individual names – associated with three dates – are carved into the bottom of three rails that make up the loose seat. In addition, there is a pencil inscription on the fourth rail and initials have been branded on the lower edges of the front and rear seat rails of the chair.
John Bacon (1779-1859) and Mary Ann Warder Bacon (1782-1863) were married in 1801, the year carved after their names on the front loose seat rail. 1801 is also the year John Bacon’s father, Job Bacon (1735-1801), died. One auction catalogue essay proposes that this suggests the earliest known owner is Job Bacon but gives no evidence for his ownership. As we’ll later see, John and May Ann Bacon’s marriage had great meaning to them over their lifetimes and the date on the chair may just as well honor their betrothal than the death of Job. John Bacon was Treasurer of Philadelphia from 1816 to 1829, Treasurer of Pennsylvania Institute for Deaf and Dumb 1820-1859, and the eighth Inspector of Eastern State Penitentiary 1831-1859. Mary Ann Warder Bacon was the daughter of John (1751-1828) and Ann Head Warder (1758-1829), and the great-granddaughter of the joiner John Head.
“Geo. B. Wood 1859” is carved on the rear rail of the seat frame. George Bacon Wood (1832-1909) was the grandson of John and Mary Ann Bacon whose names are on the front rail. The date carved after G. B. Woods name is the year his grandfather died, when George was 27 years old. In 1859, if this was the year G. B. Wood took ownership of the chair, Mary Ann Bacon had eight living children. It is unclear why the chair did not go to one of them before passing to the next generation. George’s mother, Elizabeth Head Bacon Wood (1807-1846) died young and perhaps the chair had been promised to her while her brothers and sisters were bequeathed other cherished objects. The chair could have been bequeathed to her son in her memory.
G. B. Wood was a painter who, after George Eastman introduced the dry-plate, took up photography as both an artistic endeavor and as a means to record his family’s trips to the Adirondacks and their life in Germantown.
In 1982, Elsie Wood Harmon, a descendant of G. B. Wood, donated more than 500 of his images to the Library Company of Philadelphia. Gifts throughout the 1980s added more than 300 images to the collection. This trove of photographs makes clear that G. B. Wood was in possession of the armchair by at least the early 1880s as it appears in many of his photographs, both in his studio and in formal images of family members posing for their portrait in the armchair. There is no such precedent for an eighteenth century furniture form being recorded photographically so often in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries as the armchair on loan to Stenton.
The last name and date carved on the loose seat is Mary May Dunn 1909. Mary May (Wood) Dunn was the daughter of George Bacon Wood – 1909 is the year he died while visiting Ipswich Massachusetts. He had been living with Mary May and her family on Staten Island, New York for a number of years and appears to have brought his armchair with him. The armchair is said to have been purchased by a previous private owner from her descendants.
What are we to make of this succession of names and dates on the loose seat frame and when do we think they were carved? Whenever the chair changed hands or all at once? If all at once, in 1909 or later? We’ll have a closer look at the armchair in person and on zoom tomorrow but I don’t promise any answers yet! Clicking on the photos enlarges them to assist in a determination.
In Proportion to the Trouble 
Chris
Mary Ann Warder Bacon was indeed a great-granddaughter of the joiner John Head (1688-1754). The connection is through her father John Warder. He was the son of Head’s daughter Mary Head Warder (1714-1803) and Jeremiah Warder (1711-1783), who were wed in 1736.
Mary Ann Warder Bacon’s mother, Ann Head Warder, was the daughter of another John Head, a grocer from Ipswich. Although the joiner John Head also hailed from Suffolk (Bury St Edmunds), I have never been able to establish any link between the two John Heads other than the marriage of their grandchildren Ann Head and John Warder.
Jay
Ah ha! Thanks Jay, knew you would have this info. I went back through Mary Ann’s mother rather than her father and found the other John Head which really confused the mater. But of course Warders and Heads were inner-marrying from early on. It was quite a treat to examine the armchair and then realize the John Head connection. Pretty sure the Six Degrees of Separation concerning another Philadelphia Bacon will come up tomorrow.
Chris,
The tall, highly-figured solid splats, voluted shells, and drake feet on this walnut set of armchairs, are similar to those on a set of walnut side chairs with Cupid’s-bow crest rails and trapezoidal seats.
The latter set had at least six chairs, as the three survivors known to me are marked III, V and VI. Chair V is at Colonial Williamsburg Foundation: https://emuseum.history.org/objects/47011/side-chair-splat-back?ctx=bed0bdc926b4d84196d578acc0a76685aa43f3c7&idx=546/.
I have made no side-by-side examination of chairs from these two sets. However, the similarities in design, especially as to the shape and height of their splats, suggest that they may be from the same shop. The verdict is out until their construction can be compared. Have you any thoughts as to whether the sets are, indeed, from the same shop?
Secondly, given the height of the splats, do you think both sets may have originally served some special use, such as in an institution? A theory was once floated that the set of armchairs had been made for use in the Loganian Library, but that notion could not be supported, as I recall.
Good luck tomorrow with your and Laura’s woodworking and furniture presentation at Stenton. I am looking forward to it.
Jay
Jay,
I wasn’t able to get your link to work, but I know the chair, maybe this link will work:
https://emuseum.history.org/objects/47011/side-chair-splat-back?ctx=4ed369a0afdec80d0cbe1403d2edbb33a8ace6c8&idx=104
Is this the chair? There are several similarities of design but I think the chairs are too different to attempt place them in the same shop. Journeymen moved from shop to shop, patterns were copied, too much cross pollination to make strict determinations in this case. I haven’t seen any chairs from this set in person and can’t speak to any sense of a monumental quality of the side chair in this case. Also, chairs created for special institutional use tend to be armchairs.
There is still much to say about the compassed armchair set including theories about whether they were made for the Loganian Library. I would say that theory was always just a theory. At this point, no theories of original ownership or use can be supported. The set of armchairs zero in on how objects of great importance can fall into oblivion only to enthrall a later generation who will venerate them for multiple generations into the future while perhaps not knowing anything of their origin.
See you all at 1pm.
Chris
Yes, that’s the chair. I will arrange access to others in the set.
Jay
I am not familiar with the term “compassed armchair.” Is that a reference to the “circular” qualities of the seat when viewed from above?
As we try to use period terminology in an effort to be more accurate in descriptions of furniture forms, “Compassed” “compass’d” are often now used for side and armchairs of the type seen in this post. These terms show up in both advertisements and probate inventories of the time. It refers not only to the curve of the seat but also the rear stiles as well as the arms of armchairs. Although a compass is not used to layout any of these features (the curves are changing radius) the term seemed apt to makers and owners at the time. Since the early 20th century Americans have called these chairs “Queen Ann” as in “Pilgrim furniture,” “William and Mary style,” “Queen Anne style,” “Chippendale style,” and so on, a confusing and inaccurate mess of cabinetmakers and monarchies. Queen Anne ruled from 1702 until 1714, yet all the furniture made in Philadelphia during her reign is called “William and Mary.”
The British do a better job with this, sticking to monarchies for the most part (though not always) and would call our armchair “George II” or “Georgian” as this curvilinear form was being made at the end of George I’s reign and continued into George III’s. In America, we have been moving away from British monarchies as style denominators, hence “mannerist,” “early baroque,” “late baroque,” “rococo,” etc.