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Maine Antique Digest, April 2015 11-A
Jonathan Prown, director of
Chipstone.
Peter Wunsch (left) and Christie’s John Hays.
A
man’s alleged attempt to sell stolen
antiques in California led to three
men being arrested.
On February 25, Deputy Ryan Arthur-
ton of the San Bernardino County Sher-
iff’s Department responded to a commer-
cial burglary report in Yucca Valley. The
victim, David Scholar, reported that un-
known suspects had forced entry into his
business and had stolen between $20,000
and $50,000 worth of antiques, doors, and
other items.
Scholar and an unnamed local citizen
discovered an adult white male attempt-
ing to sell some of Scholar’s stolen items
to local antiques shops. Efforts were coor-
dinated between the sheriff’s department,
Scholar, and the citizen. An operation was
set in place to purchase some of Scholar’s
items the following morning.
On February 27, at approximately 9:30
a.m., Justin Channell arrived at the op-
eration location and allegedly attempted
to sell the stolen items. Channell was de-
tained by sheriff’s deputies. Scholar was
called to the location and identified some
of the items in Channell’s vehicle as those
stolen from his business.
Information led to a search warrant be-
ing served to a location in Yucca Valley
where deputies recovered a large amount
of stolen property in the residence. They
then contacted several other persons.
Eric Hansen was found living in a trail-
er on the property. Hansen had a $5000
warrant for his arrest and was found to be
in possession of tear gas. Hansen is being
held at the Morongo Basin jail in lieu of
$30,000 bail.
Cory Rifenbery was contacted in the
residence. A records check revealed
Rifenbery had a no-bail arrest warrant
for a spousal abuse penal code violation.
Rifenbery is being held in the Morongo
Basin jail without bail.
Justin Channell was arrested for com-
mercial burglary and is being held in the
Morongo Basin jail in lieu of $25,000 bail.
Man Trying to Sell Stolen Antiques Arrested in
Sting Operation
Gadsden mentioned the success of
American Furniture
, the journal launched
in 1993 (now with 21 volumes with 147
articles, 97 book reviews, and related bib-
liographies), and
Ceramics in America
,
the journal launched in 2001 (now with
14 volumes, 34 long articles, 94 short
ones, and 70 book reviews, plus bibliog-
raphies). She spoke of Chipstone as an
incubator for ideas and praised Jonathan
Prown for his leadership of the team and
for making work at Chipstone challeng-
ing in its constant search for new ways of
dealing with decorative arts in America.
Prown acknowledged the founders,
Stanley and Polly Stone, and told how
Martin Wunsch would visit their house
in Fox Point, Wisconsin, 35 years ago.
Prown said he believes that Polly and
Stanley Stone would be pleased at the
institutional reach of Chipstone and the
team that made it happen.
by Lita Solis-Cohen
A
t a time when historic houses are struggling to
attract an audience, Stenton, the house James
Logan (1674-1751) completed in 1730 five miles
northwest of the center of Philadelphia, where
generations of Logans lived until 1910, has had a
constant flow of visitors. Those who have seen it
are telling friends and neighbors about it. There is
a real buzz.
Everyone knows about William Penn and Ben-
jamin Franklin, but James Logan was just as im-
portant a Pennsylvanian as they were, though less
well known. A scholarly book collector, Logan
read many languages, including Latin, Greek, and
Arabic, conducted scientific experiments, and cor-
responded with some of the great scientific minds
of Europe. His nearly 3000-book library is at the
Library Company of Philadelphia. His country
house, the finest 18th-century house in the region,
is filled with treasures owned by the first three gen-
erations of Logans who lived there.
James Logan came to America at the age of 25
with William Penn, who had recruited him to serve
as his provincial secretary. Logan became a suc-
cessful importer of textiles and trade goods from
England to Philadelphia and an exporter of furs
obtained through trade with Native Americans to
England, and he was a landowner.
According to Laura Keim, Stenton’s curator and
historian, James Logan was 40 when he finished
building the house. Stenton is named after his fa-
ther’s birthplace in Scotland. He had acquired 511
acres for his Stenton Plantations and divided it
into two tenant farms, woodlands, and a cider mill
and said he wanted a “plain, cheap farmer’s stone
house” as a place to retire. Instead, he remained
active in business and politics and built one of the
grandest, up-to-date hipped-roof brick houses in
the province.
In 1714 Logan had married Sarah Read. Four
of their children would survive to adulthood: Sar-
ah (Sally), William (Billy), Hannah, and James
Jr. (Jimmy). The house was used for fashionable
entertaining, as a scholarly retreat for reading and
writing, and as a government mansion displaying
material wealth. James Logan lived there into old
age, incapacitated in his last two years. He died
there at the age of 77 after a series of strokes.
The National Society of the Colonial Dames of
America in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania
has maintained the house ever since it was sold
(empty) to the city of Philadelphia in 1899. The
primary focus of the Colonial Dames was to re-
furnish the house, as far as possible with Logan’s
things. The Logania they collected tells the stories
of multiple generations of Logans who inhabited
Stenton.
For a conference presented in September 2014 by
the McNeil Center for Early American Studies at
the University of Pennsylvania, the Library Com-
pany of Philadelphia, and the Historical Society of
Pennsylvania, “James Logan and the Networks of
Atlantic Culture and Politics: 1699-1751,”
Laura
Keim and the Colonial Dames brought together an
extraordinary group of objects from public and pri-
vate collections. The resulting exhibition,
Stenton
Reassembled
, on view through this September, is
a year-long reunion of James Logan’s furnishings,
most of which have not been exhibited at Stenton
in recent years. This gathering of artifacts was sup-
Logania
Courtesy the National Society of the Colonial
Dames of America in the Commonwealth of
Pennsylvania at Stenton.
ported by a grant from the Richard C. von
Hess Foundation and is accompanied by an
informative catalog.
Logan scholars have had four inventories
from two generations to guide them. Instead
of leaving Logania to Stenton, Logan de-
scendants left furniture and furnishings to the
Historical Society of Pennsylvania, the state
of Pennsylvania, and other historic houses,
or sold it to dealers or collectors. One branch
of the Logan family in England preserved its
American material and has given or plans to
bequeath Logan objects to Stenton.
According to curator Keim, there were 75
Queen Anne chairs at Stenton. “Chairs, es-
pecially those in sets, were kept at the wall
as if in full attention, waiting until needed, at
which time a grouping may have been set up
by a window during the day or by the fire on
a cool night,” she explained at a recent tour.
Keim gathered side chairs distinguished by
dovetailed front leg construction, veneered
seat frames, C-scrolls under the knees, and
a single turned rear stretcher, which may be
from a set Logan owned, and other similar
chairs, some made of solid wood not ve-
neered, some with shaped rear legs and more
pronounced trifid feet and shell-carved knees,
and some with serpentine stretchers made of
maple instead of walnut. They all seem to
belong in the yellow bedchamber where they
can be seen.
A trumpet-turned-leg stool in the William
and Mary style may be one of the oldest piec-
es of seating furniture with a Logan family
provenance. It has been loaned by the Phil-
adelphia History Museum at the Atwater
Kent, which is the custodian of the Historical
Society of Pennsylvania’s collection. Keim
believes the young James Logan may have
bought it when he lived at the Slate Roof
House, near the Philadelphia wharfs, with
other young Quaker merchants. Now up-
holstered in leather, it originally had a cane
seat. At his death it was in the blue
lodging room, which housed the
bulk of his library. An easy chair,
which had its original casters when
it was sold to a private collector at
Christie’s in 1995, has now been
reupholstered and its casters re-
moved. At Logan’s death an easy
chair like this one was in the parlor.
Easy chairs were designed for the
elderly and infirm, Keim notes in
the exhibition catalog.
Logan’s settee, now at the Met-
ropolitan Museum of Art in New
York City, descended to Logan’s
daughter Hannah, who married
James Smith. The Metropolitan
Museum of Art would not loan it
to Stenton, but a reproduction has
been made. Independence Nation-
al Historical Park loaned the caned
armchair that William Penn gave to
James Logan. Deborah Norris Lo-
gan, wife of James Logan’s grand-
son Dr. George Logan, had given
the chair to antiquarian John Fan-
ning Watson in 1824, and Watson
gave it to Independence Hall.
One of five tea tables that be-
long to the Colonial Dames may
be the one inventoried in 1752 af-
ter James Logan’s death. A bottle
chest on a later stand, loaned by
the Philadelphia History Museum,
and spice box, 1700-20, may have
been acquired by Logan before he
moved to Stenton. A hanging cor-
ner cupboard fits perfectly into a
corner of the back dining room
and is probably the cupboard that
hung there when it was valued at
ten shillings in 1752. The glass-
doored cupboard with two deep
drawers that William Macpherson
Hornor called a “Pewter Press” in
1935 is now thought to have been
a bookcase. It was loaned by the
Philadelphia Museum of Art. The
monumental open cupboard over
a case with two drawers and two
doors in the back dining room is
a more likely candidate for being
the pewter press found in James
Logan’s 1752 inventory listed as
worth one pound. Keim suggests it
may have been made by a German
cabinetmaker in Germantown.
Mrs. Lammot du Pont Copeland
left the Colonial Dames a two-part
tiger maple flat-top high chest and
matching dressing table that were
valued at £7 in James Logan’s
1752 inventory. They descended
in the Logan family and were sold
by Robert Restalrig Logan to Joe
Kindig Jr., who sold them to Mr.
and Mrs. Copeland. They stand in
the yellow bedroom on the second
floor.
A 67" tall looking glass fits per-
fectly in the fielded panel in Sten-
ton’s living room, expanding the
depth of the house. Loaned by the
Philadelphia History Museum, it
“LOGANIA” CONTINUES
ON PAGE 13-A