The light colors and delicate tracery of arts inspired by neoclassical motifs and ideas during the late eighteenth century had a marked effect on furniture design. The heavy dark forms of previous generations gave way to slender lines and shimmering surfaces painted in beautiful shades. The impact of English designers such as Thomas Sheraton and brothers Robert and James Adam was felt in an aesthetic revolution that influenced both architecture and the furnishings contained within. One of the results was the "fancy" chair, an alternative to the ubiquitous Windsor chair. The basic difference in construction between the two was the use of long back posts in the fancy chair, which formed an elegant, continuous line.

Fancy chairs may have been introduced in America as early as the mid-1870s and were based upon "the newest and most approved London patterns." New York, Philadelphia, and Baltimore were the taste centers promoting the new styles, which persisted and developed almost to the middle of the nineteenth century. The influence of the Greek klismos style is felt in the slightly bent back legs and the three uprights of the back posts, whose flat tablets became opportunities for painted embellishment. The seats were often fashion from rush, which was woven, or "matted," and then "moulded" by attaching stripes of wood around the outside edges, which later could be decorated. Similar examples associated with Salem, Massachusetts, also exhibit the triple-back arrangement and painted decoration of striping, twining flowers, and umber and gold leaf elements, reminiscent of schoolgirl painting on worktables and other pieces of occasional furniture.

Stacy C. Hollander, "Fancy Side Chair," in American Anthem: Masterworks from the American Folk Art Museum (New York: Harry N. Abrams in association with American Folk Art Museum, 2001), 308.