This side chair (1775–90) was part of a suite of at least eight chairs originally owned by Newport merchant and slave trader Christopher Champlin (1731–1805). The legs are stop-fluted. The double-looped splat and arched serpentine crest were modeled on a plate in Robert Manwaring’s Cabinet and Chair-Maker’s Real Friend and Companion (London, 1765). The back is further ornamented with acanthus leaves at the ends of the looped straps and the top of the splat, which scroll upwards into a gadrooned ridge along the crest. Gadrooning is rarely seen on Newport furniture but appears with similar leaf carvings on two bureau tables made by Daniel Goddard or John Goddard, suggesting the chair was made in one of the Goddard shops. John Goddard was also likely one of the earliest cabinetmakers in Newport to carve stop-fluted legs. Records indicate Champlin purchased furniture from multiple Newport cabinetmakers including “10 Mahogany Chaire Frames” from John Goddard in 1775, as recorded in an invoice from Goddard to Champlin. The chair is very possibly from this set. The chair descended in Champlin’s family until it was sold with other pieces from the suite during the liquidation of the contents of the Perry House in 1858. Four chairs from the suite were later acquired by The Preservation Society of Newport County in 1953 and exhibited that year in an important loan exhibition of Newport furniture at Hunter House, which inaugurated the site as a museum of Colonial craft and history operated by the Preservation Society. The Preservation Society recently acquired two additional chairs from the suite.