Klismos side chair, one of a pair

The design of these chairs, with a concave crest rail and legs made of Greek crosses, is a modification of the ancient Greek Klismos chair. Note their resemblance to the Greek chairs featured on the Minton plates (on the wall above), as illustrated by John Moyr Smith. In 1815 Rudolph Ackermann published a drawing of a similar dining or drawing room chair in his famous Repository of Arts. Indeed, these two chairs resemble those from a large set purchased for the Telfair House in Savannah, Georgia and now on view there at the Telfair Museum of Art.