The Garden Settee

Hard Maple, Eastern White Pine, White Oak, Gold Enamel

A reimagining of an Arrowback settee with iconic gold-on-black Hitchcock painting, blending contemporary imagery into traditional fruit and garden motifs. Popular in the 17th century, Arrowback settees were not intended for prolonged sitting but functioned as objects of welcome and displays of wealth. The painted imagery reflects this dual role: golden female hands, fruit, scissors, and drapery both offer and withhold symbols of prosperity and hospitality. While garden and fruit motifs were typically static stenciled decorations, here the feminine presence is active—nourishing and destroying plants, emerging from and disappearing into foliage, at once in control of and constrained by colonial symbols.

Images cont. below