Armchair

Abel William Bahr (1877-1959), Weybridge, England, Montreal, Canada and Ridgefield, CT, possibly by 1951-1959 [1];

By descent to his daughter, Edna H. Bahr (1907-1986), Ridgefield, CT, 1959-1960;

Her gift to The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, 1960.

NOTES:

[1] Abel William Bahr was a coal merchant and importer with Scottish and Chinese ancestry, who collected Chinese art and served as the secretary of the North China branch of the Royal Asiatic Society from 1909. This chair is seen in a photograph of Bahr’s lacquer furniture in the A.W. Bahr Papers, Smithsonian National Museum of Asian Art, Washington DC, Box 1, folder 18. The photograph is undated, but a mailing envelope addressed to Bahr with a written description on the front: "Photos, Negatives Lacquer Furniture," which is adjacent to the photograph in the file, contains a postmark that is difficult to decipher but may read "11 Apr 51." For more on Bahr, see Roy Davids and Dominic Jellinek, Provenance: Collectors, Dealers & Scholars in the Field of Chinese Ceramics in Britain & America (Oxon, UK: Roy Davids, 2011 ), 56-58.