AFA Winter 2017

T he Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, has in its collection an English chair (Fig. 1) that has held an important place in Boston furniture history as a London-made chair that made its way to Boston shortly after its creation, inf luencing early generations of Boston furniture makers. 1 The chair dates to around 1750–1760 and clearly relates to Thomas Chippendale’s designs as seen in plate 14 of the 1762 edition of The Gentleman and Cabinet-Maker’s Director . Also in the MFA’s collection is a Boston-made chair (Fig. 2), which is closely related, albeit with a slightly modified design and using native North American woods as the secondary materials. 2017 Antiques & Fine Art 123 There has been speculation as to the potential ownership in Boston of the English chair in the nineteenth, and even back into the eighteenth century. Recent research has been undertaken to clarify the history of this chair. In the curatorial files at the MFA, there is a tantalizing un-cited notation that the chair was owned by William B. Phillips Jr. (1750– 1827), placing it in Boston in the first decade of the nineteenth century. Other available evidence related to its earlier ownership exists in the form of two stamped marks: “T. Hooper” on the backseat rail, and “T. Hoo” on the corner brace (Figs. 3, 4). These were long assumed to be a maker’s mark, but it seems more likely that the chair was branded by an early owner. Recent research has uncovered compelling connections among the donor of the chair to the MFA in 1930, the Hooper family of Boston in the nineteenth century, and Phillips. Phillips was not only a prominent Bostonian from a prosperous family, but also served as the first lieutenant governor of Massachusetts from 1812 to 1823. The 1930 donor was Mrs. Joshua Crane Sr., who gave the chair to the MFA in memory of her husband. Mrs. Crane, born Anne Eliza Jose in Buxton, Maine, in 1846, died in Brookline, Mass., in 1941. Her parents, also of Maine, were Mark Emery Jose and Dorcas Rebecca Hanson. An explanation of the chair’s “Hooper” brand is suggested by the marriage of Mrs. Crane’s paternal aunt, Sarah Emery Jose (born in Buxton in 1822, died in Boston in 1914), to Samuel Thompson Hooper (1816– 1872) of Boston. Sarah was a generous early contributor to the MFA in the 1890s. Both she and her niece were active in the Unitarian community and were contributors to King’s Chapel, Boston. Samuel Thompson Hooper’s father, Thomas Hooper (born 1779 in Charlestown, died in 1868 in Boston), was a town treasurer and manager/teller at the Massachusetts Bank in the early years of the Fig. 2: Side chair, Boston, about 1765–85. Mahogany, soft maple, red oak, 38¼ x 24⅝ x 18⅞ in. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Gift of Priscilla Quincy Weld in memory of her mother and grandmother, Ruth Draper Peters and Alice Ames Draper, and Elizabeth Marie Paramino Fund in memory of John F. Paramino, Boston Sculptor, Arthur Tracy Cabot Fund, Ernest Kahn Fund, John Wheelock Elliott and John Morse Elliott Fund, Alice M. Bartlett Fund, and Edwin E. Jack Fund (1996.52). Photograph © Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. nineteenth century. A faint handwritten label, with the names “Phillips” and “Thomas Hooper” on the underside of the chair, may have been written by Mrs. Crane and offers a further tempting clue.