Label Type
Object LabelLabel
Armchair, 1730-1760
coastal New England
maple and rush
John S. Locke collection, gift of the estate of Almira Locke McArthur
Label Type
Cultural/Historical ContextLabel
This armchair has the stance and presence befitting the man credited with being its original owner: the Reverend John Fairfield (1736-1819). Rev. Fairfield lived in Boston, graduated from Harvard College in 1757 and taught school until he began preaching in 1760. On 20 July 1762 he married Mrs. Mary, the daughter of Capt. Ichabod Goodwin and the widow of Foxwell Curtis Cutts. Mary died in 1774 leaving Rev. Fairfield with a family of six children. He remarried two more times. On 27 October 1762, he was ordained in Saco, then called Pepperrellborough, and became the first settled minister of the First Parish Church.
Rev. Fairfield’s furniture descended to his daughter Sarah who married Daniel Cleaves in 1795, to their son, Daniel Cleaves, Jr., and then to John Locke and Marcia Cleaves. The donor, Almira Locke McArthur, was their daughter.
It is difficult to pin down precisely where this chair was made as the form and features are common. The shaped back of the chair, referred to in the 18th century as a “crooked” back was drawn from Chinese fashion brought to London along with porcelain and the introduction of tea and tea-drinking. The yoked crest rail and the vase-shaped splat are also elements of the Queen Anne style but the turned legs and the carved “Spanish” front feet are remnants of an earlier fashion. The rush seat was an alternative to upholstery; it could have been fabricated in a town which did not have the services of an upholsterer, or the seat may have been rushed in a larger urban center where several tradesmen practiced and consumers could choose the look and materials that suited their needs and that they could afford.
