Maine Antique Digest March 2015

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Maine Antique Digest, March 2015 11-C
- FEATURE -
proceeded even during Washington’s extended
years away as general and president. Histo-
rians and restorers have benefited from those
absences because Washington directed much
of the work by communications from afar, and
those letters still exist. We know that he had
English pattern books, access to drawings and
objects from his English and French friends
including Lafayette, and advice from deal-
ers who furnished his presidential quarters in
New York and Philadelphia. The New Room,
the place where Washington’s body was laid
out after his death, is freshly restored follow-
ing extensive research and analysis. Today’s
visitors can become steeped in its Neoclassical
symmetry, architecture, furniture, and artwork.
David Bosse, Historic Deerfield’s librarian
and curator of maps, focused his presentation
on the paper maps of the post-Revolution years.
Earlier engraved copper-plate maps, mostly
printed in England for government and private
subscribers, had ornate cartouches and flour-
ishes. These were succeeded by plainer, more
accurate ones proudly labeled as produced in
America. Some maps even placed the prime
meridian at Philadelphia rather than London.
While most mapmakers were not financially
successful and many freely copied their com-
petitors’ work, their maps and town plans had
important commercial uses and also were dis-
played as “ornamental furniture” to indicate the
owners’ taste and learning. A few were origi-
nally tinted, but most probably were hand col-
ored later to enhance their appeal.
Zea returned to the podium to speak about
the Asa Stebbins clock, recently purchased
at Sotheby’s and returned to its first home
in Historic Deerfield’s 1799 brick Stebbins
house. Zea described the 1799 Aaron Willard
long-case eight-day clock as “fabulous,” as
“free-standing architecture,” and its mahogany
105" tall case he attributed to cabinetmaker Ste-
phen Badlam. It cost at least $100 new, when an
average worker’s daily wage was 25¢ to 50¢,
and it was a “planned acquisition,” designed to
display Stebbins’s affluence and sophistication.
Although far from Boston and one of the area’s
original settlers, Stebbins was far from being
provincial. He grew wealthy from agricultural
and industrial pursuits, and his home and fur-
nishings, all in the latest Neoclassical style,
confirmed his status.
An expert on early American clocks, Zea also
offered details on Aaron’s brother Simon Wil-
lard, a “genius” who could “package beauty.”
Simon’s invention, the patent timepiece known
better as the banjo clock, “denied wood” and
“was all about paint and glass.” Stebbins’s
Aaron Willard clock is a rare example of a
return of a cultural artifact to its original loca-
tion, regaining its place as the “heartbeat of the
household.” Any uncertainty about whether
this truly is Stebbins’s clock was resolved (not
only by documents and trails of ownership) as
the restored clock was eased into its corner.
When the installers began to secure the case to
the wall through a preexisting hole in its back-
board, they drilled into a filled hole in the house
wall—at exactly that spot.
Saturday’s final presentation was a demon-
stration by cabinetmaker Allan Breed of Roll-
insford, New Hampshire. Breed is the rare type
of fine craftsman who also lectures, writes, and
prepares exhibits on furniture restoration and
connoisseurship. He demonstrated his carving
techniques on a large mahogany bedpost, mate
to one he produced some years ago for the Pea-
body Essex Museum. He noted that this type
of carving “in the round” is easier (his word)
than carving “in the flat” when the wood grain
is more difficult to manage.
Breed also told us that early carvers had the
advantage of working with air-dried wood,
which retained a “buttery” feel not found in
modern drier kiln-dried lumber. A close video
camera allowed us to watch his hands and tools
on a large screen, and we saw leaves quickly
take shape on the curved red surfaces. Time
was money in the past too, and carvers needed
to proceed efficiently with a minimum number
of tools and tool changes, as well as work ambi-
dextrously as Breed does. Copying and creating
carved designs requires careful advance plan-
ning, and his voice of experience also warned
against designing a pattern for which no tool is
handy. While carving, both hands hold the tool,
one acting as the gas pedal, the other as the
brake. His tools are very sharp, but he warned
that cuts usually happen only when brushing
away wood chips. Finally, we learned that each
carver has a distinctive style, and an experienced eye can
learn to identify a carver in the same way that a musician’s
style is recognizable to music scholars.
Sunday’s opening presentation was the cure for anyone’s
morning drowsiness. William Hosley presented a high-energy
lecture, “Reflections onAsher Benjamin and Neoclassicism in
Early New England.” An independent and published scholar
who heads Terra Firma Northeast, Hosley is also well known
for his past work at the New Haven Museum, Connecticut
Landmarks, and the Wadsworth Atheneum. He is an expert
on “heritage tourism” focusing on smaller, lesser-known his-
toric sites. He admitted that he is particularly interested in
the second of the “two New Englands,” the inland and more
western-looking areas rather than the seacoast communities.
Prior to the American Revolution, architects were little
known and buildings were designed and built by carpenters,
joiners, and housewrights. Following our independence,
architects such as Asher Benjamin, designer of the original
building of Deerfield Academy, trained with pattern books of
Classical images and then designed buildings that reflected
our new “cultural nationalism.” Throughout western Mas-
sachusetts, New Hampshire, and Vermont, Hosley has doc-
umented and photographed hundreds of homes and public
buildings in what he calls the “Country Palladian” style. Per-
haps most important, Asher Benjamin published in 1797 the
first American builder’s guide, applying the Classical princi-
ples of mathematics, geometry, and science to architecture.
By 1802, he had arrived in Boston, become a “society hill”
builder, and never looked back. As Hosley quipped, Benjamin
became “the Martha Stewart” of architecture, producing 42
editions of seven books on the subject.
Hosley then moved onto the broader subject of American
Neoclassicism, a term that was not applied to the concept
until later in the 19th century. He stated that it reflected the
character and aspirations of the self-conscious post-Revolu-
tion generation. George Washington iconography, schoolgirl
needlework, printed engravings, symbolic eagle carvings
and inlay, and mourning pictures all demonstrated a hope
that our nation was heir to elevated Greek and Roman ideals.
New furniture forms and versions—sideboards, washstands,
desk-and-bookcases, and standing clocks—proliferated in a
“flaunting of geometry, symmetry, and complexity,” as did
gravestones. He called our New England meetinghouses “the
greatest things in our world” and wondered if “maybe Amer-
ica peaked during this period.”
Another well-known craftsman/scholar, Robert Mussey,
was next with “From Ancient Greece to the Streets of Bos-
ton: Furniture-Making in Urban Massachusetts.” Mussey
is a published expert on John and Thomas Seymour and is
now deep into a similar project on Boston cabinetmaker Isaac
Vose. Greek and Latin in this period were much more famil-
iar than today in Boston, and Classical iconography also was
well understood. Neoclassical-style desks, for example, were
“pieces of architecture,” geometric Latin and Greek languages
in three dimensions. Conversely, the Seymours are famous for
complicated veneers and inlays that reduce three dimensions
to two by the use of sand-scorched shadowing, “niche” and
“panel” inlays, and other optical devices that convey depth
and relief in place of deep carving.
Mussey cited many furniture objects in museum collec-
tions that incorporate Classical symbols and shapes—lyres,
swags, garlands, urns, goddesses, chariots, etc. He explained
that there really are three overlapping stylistic periods within
American Neoclassicism: Federal, 1785-1820; English
Regency, 1808-25; and Classical, 1813-40. The Grecian
style emerged in this third period, largely driven by Napo-
leon’s French Empire designers. Greek Revival motifs were
prevalent, especially favored by Boston’s extremely wealthy
merchant Peter Chardon Brooks, then faded as America
retreated from Classicism into the individualism and roman-
ticism championed by Emerson.
The appropriate finale was “It’s All Greek to Me: Pre-
serving the Captain Howland House,” presented by Ste-
phen Fletcher of Skinner, Inc. Lost on a house call drive to
Westport, Massachusetts, he passed by this unoccupied 1830
stone house languishing and deteriorating in that town. Fol-
lowing a two-and-a-half-year total restoration that included
demolition of an offensive addition and several dog kennels,
the home now stands in its Neoclassical splendor. Passers-by
continually ask “What was that,” guessing that it was a bank
or even a mortuary, proving that our culture today still asso-
ciates that ancient style with enduring institutions.
There was a bonus postscript for a small number of us
who stayed for J. Peter Spang’s guided tour of the spe-
cial collections room, named in his honor, in the Henry N.
Flynt Library. Spang, who “really likes Palladio,” has been
an active supporter of Historic Deerfield for more than 50
years, and his extensive collection of early architectural and
furniture pattern books is filling the room’s newly installed
shelves and cabinets. Several of his books, including clas-
sics by Sheraton, Hepplewhite, William Pain, James Gibbs,
and others, were laid out for us to peruse, and with clean
hands we turned pages. Spang pointed out his first important
book purchase of 1957, when he learned that such volumes
could actually be bought and owned, not just viewed in rare-
book libraries. For $8 at Goodspeed’s bookshop in Boston,
he bought a 1747 copy of James Gibbs’s Bibliotheca Rad-
cliviana, and later found additional volumes of it for even
less money while he was studying in London. His continuing
purchases over the next five decades now enable scholars to
study the books that guided the rise of Neoclassicism in the
new United States of America.
For more information and to learn about the dates and
theme of this year’s Historic Deerfield Decorative Arts
Forum, visit ).
David Bosse is librarian and curator
of maps at Historic Deerfield. Ameri-
can-produced maps of the new republic
appeared quickly after the American
Revolution. The first with an American
flag was in 1783, although it was printed
in England.
Philip Zea, president of Historic Deerfield,
welcomed us all, introduced a few speak-
ers, and delivered his own presentation on
the Asa Stebbins clock, which was recently
returned to its original Deerfield home.
Thomas Sheraton’s 1793 book is in Peter
Spang’s extensive collection of pattern
books that greatly influenced American
Neoclassical furniture makers.
J. Peter Spang, a Historic Deer-
field trustee, is shown examining
a volume on display in the library
named in his honor.
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