Louisiana Inlaid Mahogany Campeche Chairs

Pair of Louisiana Inlaid Mahogany Campeche Chairs, demilune crest, diminutive finials, flat serpentine arms, ring and vasiform turned supports, turned stretchers, curule base, h. 40 1/4 in., w. 25 1/2 in., d. 29 1/2 in. Note: 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 disseminated in the Lower Mississippi River Valley during Spanish rule of the late eighteenth century. Notably, the design was further adapted by Thomas Jefferson for the "Campeachy" chair at Monticello and by a handful of Anglo cabinet makers in the Federal era. Matched pairs of Campeche chairs are very rare, and these chairs share design characteristics with several chairs known as the “Flowerbasket” group. The full demilune crest, diminutive finials, flat serpentine arms and distinctive ring turnings on the stretchers of this pair are all very similar to those on the chair descended in the family of New York and New Orleans merchant James Collas (1788-1883) now at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, a chair descended in the family of Alabama planter James Jackson (died 1840) and a chair purchased in Houston for Mistletoe Plantation, now in the Holden collection. Reference: Jack Holden, et al. Furnishing Louisiana, Creole and Acadian Furniture 1735-1835. New Orleans: The Historic New Orleans Collection, 2010, pp. 345-347, fig. 2-3. Francis Puig. "The Early Furniture of the Mississippi River Valley," The American Craftsman and the European Tradition, 1989, Minneapolis: Minneapolis Institute of Arts. P. 165; Cybele Gontar, "The Campeche Chair in the Metropolitan Museum of Art" Metropolitan Museum Journal, 2003, p. 202, p. 38; Cybele Gontar, The Louisiana Campeche' Chair: Origin, History, and Transference Parson's School for Design Master of Art Thesis, 2000
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