Side Chair

Samuel McIntire

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

This chair and another in the collection (37.81.2) belong to a large group of seating furniture with carved ornament attributed to Samuel McIntire, a highly skilled architect and carver in Salem, Massachusetts. The bellflowers on the front legs and the urn with draped fabric on the back—standard motifs of the neoclassical style in the United State—were borrowed from decoration found on ancient Greek and Roman ceramics. The design for this vase-back chair was based on plate IId in Hepplewhite and Company's "The Cabinet-Maker and Upholsterer's Guide" (London, 1788).

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