American Furniture, Folk & Decorative Arts

Mrs. J. Armory Haskell (1864-1942) assembled one of the nation's foremost collections of Americana, generously lending objects to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Brooklyn Museum and museum galleries at Harvard and Yale Universities as well as to the landmark "The Girl Scout Loan Exhibition," at the American Art Galleries, New York, in 1929. For today's collectors, Mrs. Haskell is renowned for marking the objects in her collection with her name. With its prominent brand mark, this fine chair was from Mrs. Haskell's personal collection and probably was sold during the Parke-Bernet Galleries sale of her estate in 1944. An exceptional example of Philadelphia craftsmanship, the restrained ornamentation is confined to the elegantly carved and scrolled "C" and "S" curves and explains why William Hornor, Albert Sack and Wallace Nutting chose to illustrate companion chairs in their pioneering publications. This chair reflects Mrs. Haskell's commitment to Americana as objects of art, rather than quaint relics of the nation's past.