1740-1750, the graceful frame with arched back and scrolled arms, shell carved knees and slipper feet, deeply flared rear legs, mellow old surface set with a fine sittable, non-intrusive upholstery system designed and fabricated by Leroy Graves, fitting the chair out in green wool with loose seat cushion, 45-1/2 x 36 x 28-1/4 in.

Provenance: Sold Skinner, November 2nd, 1991, lot 50; Property from the Collection of Dudley and Constance Godfrey

Note: This easy chair is one of three nearly identical examples, each of which represent the pinnacle of early Georgian easy chair design in colonial America. All have frames with graceful cheeks, outward flaring arms with horizontal and vertical scrolls, compass seats, and cabriole legs with slipper feet and exquisitely carved shells. As furniture scholar Alan Miller has shown, the shop responsible for these three examples also produced the finest armchairs and side chairs of the period (Alan Miller, "Flux in Design and Method in Early Eighteenth-Century Philadelphia Furniture," in American Furniture, edited by Luke Beckerdite ([Lebanon, NH: University Press of New England for the Chipstone Foundation, 2014], pp. 61-66, figs. 43-49). Less expensive variants of these easy chairs are known, including one with plain knees in the collection of Wright's Ferry (Joe Kindig and Phillip Zimmerman, catalog entry 7,  Wright's Ferry: The Collection, 2 vols.[Columbia, PA: Wright's Ferry Association, 2005], 1:46). The easy chairs that match the Godfrey example are in a Pennsylvania collection; one was acquired privately by William K. du Pont, and the other sold at Horst auctions for $450,000 (hammer price) (https://www.horstauction.com/antiques-americana-auctions/featured-furniture/philadelphia-queen-anne-wing-back-chair).