Consigned by a direct descendant of John Townsend (1733-1809), these chairs are a formidable and important document of the renowned cabinetmaker’s craft. Six other chairs from the same set are known and as the only examples of cabriole-leg chairs firmly ascribed to Townsend, they stand as the basis for attributions of similar forms to his shop (see Christie's, New York, January 19, 2018, lot 161, Rhode Island Furniture Archive at the Yale University Art Gallery, RIF6104; Newport Restoration Foundation, 1999.5371.1, .2, RIF380; Leigh Keno American Anitques, 1996, RIF4005). The heft and robust shaping to the cabriole legs and claw feet illustrate Townsend’s “mature” style as discussed by Morrison H. Heckscher. Bearing a “general angularity,” the feet feature tall balls and attenuated talons, a design that contrasts with the more rounded feet seen on contemporary Newport forms made by other craftsmen, particularly Townsend’s kinsman and competitor, John Goddard (1724-1785). A departure from the slender legs and smaller feet rendered by Townsend in the 1750s, the new style was more monumental in scale and first appears on a 1762 card table (Morrison H. Heckscher, John Townsend, Newport Cabinetmaker (New York, 2005), p. 75). Other hallmarks of Townsend’s practices revealed by these chairs include diaper ornament in the crest, front legs that are squared in the back, squared, unrelieved rear legs and small pins securing the mortise and tenon joints (Heckscher, p. 96).

The chairs are possibly two of those referred to in John Townsend's will as “eight Mahogany Chairs with Claw feet” that were specified to go to his daughter Mary (Townsend) Brinley (1769-1856). As some of the chairs in the set are marked in Roman numerals greater than VIII, it is possible that the set comprised more than eight chairs and Townsend’s other children inherited the remainder of the set. Two of the chairs from this set (Newport Restoration Foundation) descended along Mary’s lines and one is depicted in an 1880s watercolor of the parlor of Mary’s niece, Ellen F. Townsend (see Heckscher, p. 208, fig. 72). It is possible that the chairs offered here were among those inherited by Mary and later acquired by her niece, Phila Feke Townsend (1812–1866) and her husband William Peckham Bullock (1805-1862) either during Mary’s lifetime or upon her death in 1856. It is also possible that the chairs descended to Phila from her father and the cabinetmaker’s son, Solomon Townsend (1776-1821). For more on furniture owned by Townsend, see Morrison H. Heckscher, "Newport and the Townsend Inheritance," The Magazine Antiques (May 2005), pp. 100-105.

The chairs descended in the same lines as the pair that sold at Christie's in 2018 cited above. Documenting their descent in the Bullock family, this other pair, as well as the pair previously owned by Leigh Keno American Antiques, bear graphite inscriptions Bullock and WPB on the chairs’ frames and slip-seat frames.
As is evidenced by the inventory of his estate, William Peckham Bullock was a prosperous resident of Providence and owned several estates and tracts of land in the city as well as a farm on Prudence Island. Noted for its “elegance and purity in style of architecture,” his large city home was at 230 Hope Street on the corner of Meeting Street (Welcome Arnold Greene, The Providence Plantations for Two Hundred and Fifty Years (Providence, 1886), p. 358; Estate papers of William P. Bullock (1863), Providence Probate Court Archives, no. A8434). The chairs offered here were among the items inherited by the Bullocks’ daughter, Rhoda Peckham Bullock (1852-1940). Rhoda died without issue and the chairs were inherited by her nephew William Bullock Waterman, Jr. (1889–1959) and are being offered at auction by his grandson.