Easy chair

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

This is an example of the earliest known type of American easy chair—a new form to emerge in Boston during the William and Mary period. It features a tall back and double scroll arms on a turned base. Easy chairs were expensive because of the costly textiles required for their upholstery and were therefore prestigious to own. With its padded back, wings, and arms and feather-filled seat cushion, the easy chair introduced a new level of seating comfort.

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