Maine Antique Digest March 2015

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Maine Antique Digest, March 2015 31-D
- FEATURE -
Very Rich & Handsome:
American Neo-Classical Decorative Arts
by Lita Solis-Cohen
“The good life as it was lived
in the United States in the early
years of the 19th century” was
handsomely presented by Hirschl
& Adler Galleries in an exhibi-
tion on the fourth floor of the
Crown Building on Fifth Avenue
in New York City December 18,
2014, to February 13 and is in an
accompanying catalog by Eliz-
abeth Feld and Stuart P. Feld.
Some of the finest American
Neoclassical furniture, mirrors,
clocks, lighting, silver, porce-
lain, and glass not already in
museums is for sale and illus-
trated and discussed in the schol-
arly catalog.
The catalog should take its
place on the library shelf next to
the other Hirschl & Adler cata-
logs: Neo-Classicism in Amer-
ica: Inspiration and Innovation,
1810-1840 (1991); Boston in the
Age of Neo-Classicism (1999);
Of the Newest Fashion: Master-
pieces of American Neo-Class-
ical Decorative Arts (2001); and
The World of Duncan Phyfe: The
Arts of New York, 1800-1847
(2011).
Stuart Feld and his daughter
Elizabeth Feld have made use
of recent scholarship by Peter
Kenny, Robert Mussey, Clark
Pearce, and others that builds on
the foundations of the pioneers in
this field such as Berry Tracy and
WilliamGerdts, who put together
a Classical America exhibi-
tion at the Newark Museum in
1963; Robert C. Smith, who
wrote about Philadelphia cab-
inetmaker Anthony Quervelle
in The Magazine Antiques in
the 1960s and ’70s; and Page
Talbott, who first published her
pioneering study of Boston fur-
niture and cabinetmakers in The
Magazine Antiques in 1975. The
Felds have chosen examples of
extraordinary quality, most of
them previously unpublished.
Some are owned by Hirschl &
Adler; some are on consignment;
and all are for sale.
During the last two decades,
more American decorative arts
scholarship has focused on Neo-
classicism than ever before. In
1998 at theMetropolitanMuseum
of Art, Peter Kenny, Frances
F. Bretter, and Ulrich Leben
brought together 36 pieces of fur-
niture by or firmly attributed to
the Parisian-trained cabinetmaker
Charles-Honoré Lannuier, who
worked in New York from 1803
to 1819 in a variety of French
styles known as Directoire, Con-
sulat, and First Empire. In 2011
the Met chronicled the work of
Duncan Phyfe, accompanied by
another documentary catalog by
Kenny, Bretter, Michael Brown,
and Matthew A. Thurlow. It was
supplemented by the Hirschl
& Adler exhibition and catalog
The World of Duncan Phyfe: The
Arts of New York, 1800-1847,
which also included the work of
Phyfe’s contemporaries—Lan-
nuier, Joseph Brauwers, J. &
J.W. Meeks, Michael Allison,
Alexander Roux, and others as
yet unidentified. That exhibition
also included silver, lighting, por-
celain, glass, paintings, watercol-
ors, drawings, and sculpture that
put Phyfe furniture in context.
The title of the newest vol-
ume, Very Rich and Handsome,
is taken from the words used by
Bostonian Abby Breese Salis-
bury to describe a group of Neo-
classical furniture she commis-
sioned from Isaac Vose & Son
on behalf of her aunt and uncle,
Elizabeth and Stephen Salisbury
ofWorcester, Massachusetts. The
Felds, as only the Felds can do it,
gathered furniture made in sev-
eral American cities in the first
decades of the 19th century to
demonstrate how cabinetmakers,
using imported furniture from
England and France or pieces
seen abroad before immigrating
or on trips to study the latest
fashions as inspiration, chose
the finest mahogany and rose-
wood veneers, and sometimes
decorated their furniture with
die-rolled gilt-brass moldings
and gilt-brass mounts that were
indeed “rich and handsome.”
Unlike some Colonial fur-
niture that was copied from
Thomas Chippendale’s The
Gentleman & Cabinet-maker’s
Director or other design books,
Neoclassical period furniture
often was a mix and match from
design books of the moment—a
leg here, a cornice from there,
a decorative molding from yet
elsewhere. In so doing furniture
makers developed local styles
that were specifically American.
The authors applaud Robert
Mussey’s identification of the
hand of carver Thomas Wight-
man on a group of Boston fur-
niture that appears to have orig-
inated in the shop of Thomas
Seymour and in the establish-
ments of James Barker and Isaac
Vose after the Seymour shop’s
closure in 1817.
They bemoan the fact that no
one has been able to name New
York carvers of caryatids. They
say more work must be done on
the sources of brass mounts and
point out how keyhole mounts
sometimes made do when more
suitable mounts were not avail-
able. Some cabinetmakers pre-
ferred certain mounts, but the
Felds warn not to use mounts
as a sole means of attribution as
they were occasionally used by
other makers buying from the
same source.
Among their lessons in con-
noisseurship the Felds illustrate
three New York card tables,
including a trestle-base card
table from about 1820, attributed
to Duncan Phyfe, that features
an ormolu mount on the frieze
that is identical to one that
Phyfe often used, including on
a labeled card table. They point
out other elements of Phyfe’s
vocabulary that suggest the
attribution, including his use of
marbled paper in the well. The
next card table in the catalog
has a cluster of columns in the
Phyfe manner, but it is signed
and inscribed by Charles-Hon-
oré Lannuier (on his cheval
glass style label). They point out
that the paw feet, painted verde
antique and gilded, and the clus-
ter-column support are derived
from Phyfe’s Anglo designs.
The next catalog entry is another
cluster-column card table by
Joseph Brauwers, active in New
York 1814-15. The printed label
attached to the medial brace
behind the skirt describes Brau-
wers as an “ebenist, from Paris”
and boasts he could supply
“richest ornaments just imported
from France.” This card table
and its mate at Winterthur have
carved paws painted to simu-
late ebony that are separated
from the mahogany legs by cast
ormolu moldings. Except for
a cellaret labeled by Brauwers
and his inclusion in David Long-
worth’s American Almanac for
1814-15, nothing more is known
of this French cabinetmaker in
New York.
There is a lot more than card
tables in this catalog. A monu-
mental bookcase (108¾" high
x 121½" wide) is surely the fin-
est example of its form known.
A large Neoclassical pier table
(50½" wide) is inscribed twice on
the underside of the marble “J.Q.
Adams/ A.H. Davenport.” This
unmistakably Boston table, with
its characteristic ebonized bun
feet encircled with die-rolled gilt-
brass moldings, and fine ormolu
mounts on mahogany veneers,
came from one of the best Bos-
ton shops. Robert Mussey and
Clark Pearce proposed an attribu-
tion to Vose & Coates or Vose’s
successor firm, Isaac Vose &
Son, in business 1804-25. The
John Quincy Adams inscription
may possibly give a clue. Adams
patronized Seymour as early as
about 1807, and the Felds sug-
gest it is possible that he later
returned to Seymour, when Sey-
mour worked for Isaac Vose &
Son as foreman, to commission
this table. A.H. Davenport, they
believe, is a late 19th- or early
20th-century cabinetmaking
firm that may have refinished or
repaired the table.
The silhouette by Augustin-
Amant-Constant-Fidèle Edouart
(1789-1861) on the catalog’s
front and back covers depicts Mr.
and Mrs. Daniel Pinckney Parker
and their children in the front par-
lor of their Boston townhouse at
40 Beacon Street that architect
Alexander Parris (1780-1852)
designed. Its high-style Neoclas-
sical interior with its plasterwork
cornice, Brussels carpet, Argand
lamps, and chandelier provides
the setting for its “very rich and
handsome” furniture.
A sofa in the exhibition and
discussed in the catalog, made
by the firm of Isaac Vose & Son
when Thomas Seymour was
serving as foreman, may be part
of the group of furniture made for
Stephen Salisbury and his wife,
Elizabeth Tuckerman Salisbury,
of Worcester, that Abby Breese
Salisbury, described as “very
rich and handsome.” A Salisbury
sofa by Isaac Vose & Sons, with
carving by Thomas Wightman,
that is in the Salisbury Mansion,
now a historic house museum,
has some similarities. Since
Salisbury’s letter refers to sofas,
the Felds speculate that this sofa
with large eagle-head legs is
similar enough in style and detail
to the documented sofa that it
may be an additional sofa from
the Salisbury order.
Examples of the late, simpler
Neoclassical design of the 1830s
were sometimes ignored by ear-
lier generations of collectors
and scholars but now fit mod-
ern taste. The Felds represent
this later style with two pairs
of curule benches; a sofa table,
made by either Duncan Phyfe
and Sons (active 1837-40) or
Duncan Phyfe and Son (active
1840-47), that is in the simpler
style, and was also included in
the 2011 Phyfe exhibition at the
Met along with other pieces in
the same style; and a set of 16
en Gondole chairs from the Van
Rensselaer family of Albany,
purchased in1835.
The Felds point out that it
is not just Neoclassical furni-
ture that is rich and handsome.
Neoclassical lighting, porce-
lains, silver, and glass fit the
bill. Most of the Neoclassical
period lamps made in England
and France, marked with the
names of American retailers, are
based on the discoveries of Fran-
co-Swiss chemist Ami Argand
(1750-1803), who invented a
burner consisting of two concen-
tric tubes surrounding a wick.
A glass chimney increased the
flow of air so the lamp produced
more light than a candle. The
Felds explain that the names of
the lamp manufacturers are often
hidden inside the lamp, but at
other times they are spelled out
on brass labels. The objection to
dense shadows cast by the fuel
tanks for Argand lamps brought
about the development of the
sinumbra lamp with a design of
a circular fuel tank surround-
ing the burner, which did away
with the shadow. American
sinumbra lamps by Cornelius
and Company in Philadelphia
and William Carleton in Boston
are illustrated, as are sinum-
bra lamps made 1830-35 by the
New England Glass Company in
Cambridge, Massachusetts, and
a French pair.
Silver by Thomas Fletcher,
porcelain from the Tucker fac-
tories in Philadelphia, French
porcelain, English Worces-
ter, and China trade porcelain
are all included, as is glass by
Bakewell, Page & Bakewell in
Pittsburgh. A pair of decanters
by Apsley Pellatt of London,
with sulphide portraits of George
Washington and Charles James
Fox, from about 1820-25, is ele-
gant indeed. Apsley Pellatt, who
obtained patents for sulphides in
1819 and 1831, chose to depict
Washington as a companion to
the parliamentarian Fox, who
changed from being a Tory to a
Whig to lead the opposition to
coercive measures against the
American Colonies.
A 10 5/8" high covered urn
or pokal, attributed to Bacca-
rat in France, has a sulphide of
Washington taken from a French
medal by Pierre-Simon-Benja-
min Duvivier (1730/31-1819),
which was derived from a pro-
file by Jean-Antoine Houdon
(1741-1828) that was made in
America. A tumbler with a sul-
phide portrait of the Marquis de
Lafayette, also probably made at
Baccarat, is based on a medal by
the Frenchman Cannois. It was
probably made for Lafayette’s
triumphal return to the United
States in 1824-25.
The catalog is $45 in the gal-
lery or $52 postpaid. It is avail-
able on the Hirschl & Adler Web
site ).
It is not just Neoclassical
furniture that is rich and
handsome. Neoclassical
lighting, porcelains, silver,
and glass fit the bill.