Who is Samuel McIntire?

(1757-1811)

McIntire is remembered not only as a furniture carver but as an architect and a carver of architectural trim as well. Coming from a family of carvers, Mclntire became prominent in 1782 as the architect and builder of the Fierce-Nicholas house in Salem, Boston.

Of the surviving pieces of McIntire's furniture, sofas and chairs seem to predominate. Mclntire decorated these with motifs that resembled those he used on his houses: baskets of fruit and flowers; sheaves of wheat; alternating fluting and rosettes; eagles; husks; cornucopias; bunches of grapes; urns with festoons and flowers; and laurel wreaths. While most of the pieces attributed to Mclntire were constructed in mahogany, he also used bird's-eye maple and satinwood. Mclntire's sofas and chairs were made with both rectangular and rounded backs; the carved ornamentation was sometimes set against a background created with a woodworking tool called a snowflake punch.

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