Fakers often re-use parts from period objects to expedite and simplify their work. The individual who produced this fraudulent easy chair on the right married the frame of a mid eighteenth-century Massachusetts easy chair with fake legs and stretchers of the sort found on Newport, Rhode Island furniture.
Another common faking strategy is to incorporate details from well known or widely published American furniture forms. At first glance, the fake Newport easy chair appears to be related to a Rhode Island high chest in the Yale University Art Gallery, illustrated above. Both pieces have knees carved with the same design, and claw-and-ball feet with exaggerated knuckles and long talons.
The Stones would have recognized these features because the Yale high chest was pictured in Ralph Carpenter’s Arts and Crafts of Newport a year before they were offered the chair. The individual who sold the Stones this chair knew that they were avid collectors and students of Rhode Island furniture and close personal friends of Mr. Carpenter.
Easy chair Boston, Massachusetts, 1745-1765 Walnut, maple, white pine, and birch Purchase, President’s Special Fund M1979.45
Easy chair American, c. 1955 Mahogany, maple, and pine Lent by the Chipstone Foundation 1955.14
