Leather armchair

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Armchairs with serpentine backs, boldly carved hand terminals, and turned front posts were made in both Boston and Philadelphia during the second quarter of the eighteenth century. This armchair has a history of ownership in New York, where leather chairs of this crooked-back design were not produced. It was probably imported from Boston, which, unlike Philadelphia, had a large export trade in leather chairs.

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