Spindle-back armchair

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The finials on this chair fall within a broad category that features a prominent spherical form at the top above one or two reels, a ring, or ball in many configurations. Such finials are found on seventeenth-century turned chairs from southern New England, in southeastern Massachusetts (10.125.236) and the Connecticut shore (10.125.208) that appear to date toward the end of the 1600s, and in the eighteenth century they become ubiquitous.

The American Wing

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The American Wing's ever-evolving collection comprises some 20,000 works of art by African American, Euro American, Latin American, and Native American men and women. Ranging from the colonial to early-modern periods, the holdings include painting, sculpture, works on paper, and decorative arts—including furniture, textiles, ceramics, glass, silver, metalwork, jewelry, basketry, quill and bead embroidery—as well as historical interiors and architectural fragments.

Metropolitan Museum of Art