Baltimore, Maryland, 1790-1810
Mahogany with tulip poplar, ash, and maple
Catalog no. 30
The oval-back chair was quite common in Great Britain, but it was rare in America outside Baltimore. Whether the design was introduced into Baltimore by way of an imported British chair, an immigrant artisan, or a published source is unknown, but Marylanders clearly embraced the concept with enthusiasm.
This chair has a history of use at the Lloyd family's Wye House on the Eastern Shore of Maryland. Until the Revolutionary War, Philadelphia was the rural Eastern Shore's principal source of high-style furniture because that city's shops and stores were accessible by land and its economy dominated the region. Baltimore's postwar emergence as the main market center of the upper Chesapeake led to a change in buying habits on the Shore.