Side chair

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Among the most ambitious of all early Queen Anne side chairs, this example has stiles with compound curves that conform to the design of the splat and a deeply undercut shell flanked by flowering vines in the crest rail. The overall design was borrowed directly from a popular English chair pattern. By tradition, the chair was made for the Boston merchant Charles Apthorp (1698–1758).

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