RAVENEL ACCENT CHAIR

With the opening of Winterthur Museum in 1951, Henry Francis du Pont and his family moved to a Regency-style villa built just across the lawn. He decorated his new house with English, French, and Italian antiques acquired early in his career as a collector. Many of those furnishings had filled the du Pont's Park Avenue apartment for the previous thirty years. One of their friends described the Park Avenue ambience as very "swagger," or elegant. In 1994, Christie's auction house in New York sold this collection, raising several million dollars for Winterthur's acquisitions fund. The Ravenel Accent Chair is an updated version of his original cane-back tub chair.