Tied with a triple bowknot, four African ostrich feathers give way to a lively bouquet of pink and blue flowers. This painted chair is adapted from a design in the Cabinet-Maker and Upholsterer’s Guide (London, 1788), published by Englishwoman Alice Hepplewhite. American furniture makers used her handbook for inspiration, as their clients still saw England as the pinnacle of style well after the Revolution. The chair was likely made for a family member to join an original suite commissioned by Elias Hasket Derby (1739–1799), a merchant in Salem, Massachusetts. Derby accumulated enormous wealth establishing trade between China and the newly independent United States.