A Rare and Elegant American Federal Inlaid Mahogany Settee, early 19th c., probably Charleston, South Carolina, the frame with a reeded crestrail centered by a tablet, incurvate arms on reeded baluster stiles, the seat rail blocks with mandorla-form inlay of dianthus, turned tapering legs ending in brass cuffs and casters; yellow pine, ash and American black walnut secondary woods, height 38 in., width 53 in., depth 24 in. E80000-120000 Note: This unpublished settee matches a series of precise parallels, for both its forms and decoration, among secure works of Charleston craftsmanship from the period of 1795 1810. A nearly identical but slightly simpler settee of those dates, that descended in the Smythe House (31 Legare Street), Charleston, is now in the Museum of Early Southern Decorative Arts (MESDA), Winston- Salem (acc. No. 2023-7: Rauschenberg and Bivins, vol. 2, pp. 785-787). That example shares this settee's intimate proportions with a very similar frame construction. The settee here also offers a clear refinement of delicate reedings on the arm supports-both on the teardrop or baluster forms in front, as well as on the flat vertical faced behind them, engaged into the upholstered arms-with correspondingly tapered reedings on the front legs; all those elements on the MESDA sofa have flat or plainly-turned surfaces. A third close parallel to these cognates is a sofa, again of 1795-1810, in the Historic Charleston Foundation (acc. No. 199.1.17: Rauschenberg and Bivins, vol. 2. pp. 786-787); that shorter example, like this one, was apparently also designed with five rather than six legs (all, in that case, of square section, with inlays over tapered profiles on the front legs). The Historic Charleston Foundation sofa shares the teardrop or baluster-shaped armrests of this example, and-like the aforementioned MESDA sofa-the motif of the upper arms rising above the crest rail, in a tight radial curve at the upper corners. On both those parallel sofas, each of the interesting elements of arms and crest rails are embellished with string inlays; on this present example-perhaps uniquely-the more three-dimensional reeding, introduced on the legs and arm supports, is also continued along the upper arms and across the crest rail. The articulation of that uppermost element included reeded quadrant fans at the upper corners of the raised satinwood-inlaid central panel: exactly the same miniature embellishments occur on a parallel "square sofa" that was made in Charleston evidently for Cleland Kinloch (1759-1823), and descended through his daughter Harriet's marriage to Henry Augustus Middleton of the The Oaks Plantation (MESDA Reference File 9005: Rauschenberg and Bivins, vol. 2, pp. 773, 783-784). That sofa, in turn has an almost identical twin-also with these same reeded arms, but again with flat-surfaced, inlaid legs-in the Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven (acc. No. 1954.37.29). All four of the parallel sofas that have so far been compared to the present lot 321, illustrated here, have simple diamond-shaped inlays on their leg stiles; this sofa is apparently unique in displaying, on those elements, vertical oval inlays of naturalistically-rendered carnations (or "pinks"), tinted green and pink on white edge-banded grounds. The use after c. 1785 of such elliptical white-ground inlays, called paterae, "indeed has become a hallmark of Charleston's neoclassical style[; nevertheless, it is believed that all of this unusual figural work was imported from Britain," for example by such agents as the Charleston entrepreneur Charles Christian Lewis Wittich, who in 1799 advertised the arrival from London and Liverpool of a shipment of cabinetmakers' materials with a "variety of Ornaments for inlaying" including "a handsome assortment of .. Flowers" (Rauschenberg and Bivins, vol. 2. p. 479). Some eight or ten of the more elaborately decorated pieces of Charleston furniture of this period are embellished with close cognates to these inlays; but the most pertinent is an Ovolo-Corner Card Table, once more of 1795-1810, that has descended in the Wilson family of Charleston (MESDA Reference File 8496): it incorporated, in the same positions on its leg stiles as this settee, the identical paterae with stalks of pinks, including the same three flowers above the same rising and downturned leaves ( Rauschenberg and Bivins, vol. 2, pp. 686-688). It is logical to surmise that this superb masterpiece, by an extraordinarily gifted American cabinetmaker with access to the latest imports of British inlay materials, may be an important discovery of an elaborately carved and decorated example of Charleston seat furniture heretofore unrecorded. Apparently it alone, among its published cognates, boasts delicately-wrought reedings on all exposed members except its back legs: that is, on the front legs, all arm supports (including baluster forms in front, and engaged posts behind), the arms themselves, the crest rail, and the central tablet's quadrant fans. It may be the only example of a Charleston "square sofa" (a type based on designs by Thomas Sheraton's Drawing-Book of 1793) that combines that overall reeding with delicately-inlaid paterae of English flowers, together with a more a classic satinwood panel in the crest rail. A note about the secondary woods: The use of yellow pine and ash as secondary woods in upholstered Charleston Federal seat furniture is well documented. Two side chairs and two sofas descended in Charleston families ( Rauschenberg and Bivins, vol. 2 pp. 772-787, fig. Nch-17, Nch-19, Nch- 21, Nch-23, Nch-24). The use of American black walnut, though less documented in Charleston, is used in the fly frame of a games table des-cended in the Alston family (Rauschenberg and Bivins, vol. 2, pp. 670-671 fig. NT-36) Reference: Bradford L. Rauschenberg and John Bivins, Jr., The Furniture of Charleston, 1680-1820, 3 vols., Winston Salem, 2003: vol. 2 Neoclassical Furniture.