Lot 478
A Southern Walnut Campeachy Chair, early 19th c., arched crest with ball finials, scrolled arms with supports continuing to floor, curule supports with molded stretchers, presented in frame. Note : The use of walnut, the demilune crest, shaped arms and the unadorned stretchers on this chair are likely indicative of a Virginia maker. A maple chair from Fluvanna County descended in the Gwathmey family has similar elements to those seen here. The campeche form has a distinctive history in North America. With origins in the ""Butac"" chair known in Campeche, a port city of the Yucatan Peninsula, scholars Cybele Gontar and Francis Puig posit that this Central American chair form evolved in the Lower Mississippi River Valley during Spanish rule of the late eighteenth century. A mahogany chair, now in the James Madison Museum, was given to Madison by Thomas Jefferson who used it as a model for ""Campeachy"" chairs made at the Monticello joinery. The distinctive continuation of the arm support to the floor on this lot is a rare innovation that cleverly reinforces structural vulnerabilities known in the form. Reference: Holden, Bacot, Gontar, et. al. Furnishing Louisiana p. 358, fig. 20; Gontar. ""The American Campeche Chair"", Magazine Antiques, (May 2009), pp. 88-95; Gontar. ""The Campeche Chair in the Metropolitan Museum of Art"" Metropolitan Museum Journal (Vol. 38, 2003), p. 184, fig. 1 and p. 190; www.thejamesmadisonmuseum.org"
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