Side Chair

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

With its perfect proportions, elegantly integrated crest and splat design, and unsurpassed carving, this is perhaps the best of all Philadelphia Chippendale chairs. The splat pattern, its dominant figure-eight motif flowing from the crest rail, is a free adaptation from plate 16 of the third edition of Thomas Chippendale's Gentleman and Cabinet-Maker's Director (1762) (see 1982.1133).

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