This elegant chair was made for a gig, a light two-wheeled carriage for one person. Surviving detached gig seats are sometimes erroneously called gondola chairs. Indeed, it was called this by Isabella Gardner. According to Morris Carter, the museum’s first director, she was carried around her museum in it after being paralyzed by a stroke in 1919. Its Asian figures in landscapes, accompanied by flowers and shell motifs of applied and painted pastiglia on a deep red ground, are characteristic of Venetian furniture made to imitate Chinese lacquer.