Side Chair

Alexander Jackson Davis

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Alexander Jackson Davis, one of the preeminent architects of nineteenth-century America, worked in a range of revival styles. Unlike most architects of the time, he occasionally supplied furniture designs to select clients. This animated chair, which appears ready to spring from its diminutive hoof feet, is a version of a design he made for John J. Herrick, the owner of a castellated villa designed by Davis that once stood in Tarrytown, New York. Davis’s elegant chair artfully suggests and adapts the Gothic style, which was meant to convey the values of intellect, learned contemplation, and sophistication.

The American Wing

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The American Wing's ever-evolving collection comprises some 20,000 works of art by African American, Euro American, Latin American, and Native American men and women. Ranging from the colonial to early-modern periods, the holdings include painting, sculpture, works on paper, and decorative arts—including furniture, textiles, ceramics, glass, silver, metalwork, jewelry, basketry, quill and bead embroidery—as well as historical interiors and architectural fragments.

Metropolitan Museum of Art