Thedeacon must have longed for the two hours’ sermon to end, if he had to sit upon this chair with its high, narrow seat. There are several kinds of wood in these chairs, and when found they were painted black.
Illus. 142.—Roundabout
Chair, about 1740.
An unusually fine banister chair, from the Poore collection at Indian Hill, Newburyport, is shown in Illustration [141], with carved top and underbrace and Spanish feet. The seat is rush, as it usually is in banister chairs.
“Roundabout” chairs are met with in inventories from 1738 under various names,—“three-cornered chair,” “half round chair,” “round about chair,”—but they are now known as roundabout or corner chairs. They were made in different styles, like other chairs, from the turned or the Dutch bandy-leg, down to the carved Chippendale leg with claw-and-ball foot.
Illustration [142] shows a roundabout chair with turned legs, the front leg ending in a Dutch foot. This is in the Whipple house at Ipswich.
Illus. 143.—Slat-back Chairs, 1700-1750.
The most common chair during the first half of the eighteenth century was the “slat back,” with a rush seat. The number of slats varied; three, four, and five slats being used. The slats were also made in different designs, those made in Pennsylvania being curved.
