About a month ago this chair was listed on Ebay. The seller attributed it to Hunzinger and at first glance, I thought it was too. I found it odd that the armrest was integrated into a sloping rear leg and the patent stamp just wasn't right. There was no "Hunzinger" and I wasn't aware of a Hungzinger patent on April 17 1877. These differences piqued my curiosity so I dug back through all patents issued on that date. I came across Design Patent D9904, "Design for Chairs", issued to Peter Diehl of New York, NY. The patent has a picture of two chairs identical in structure to the above chair but with different design elements.
Although I've never seen another one, I wonder how many of these chairs have been incorrectly attributed to Hunzinger. It would be interesting to know whether Diehl produced the chairs in his own shop or licensed the design to someone else.
Here's some pictures from the listing:
