Maine Antique Digest May 2015

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12-A Maine Antique Digest, May 2015
After the 2015 Philadelphia Antiques Show
was canceled, Anne Hamilton and Nancy
Kneeland from the volunteers and Richard
Worley and Joan Johnson, the current and
past chairs of the Antiques Show Advisory
Committee, met to focus on the possibility of
a 2016 show.
Catherine Sweeney Singer and the commit-
tee of four mutually agreed that the 2016 show
needed a fresh start. Diana Bittel and Ralph and
Karen DiSaia have been engaged to do a feasi-
bility study to evaluate location, date, size, and
focus. The committee gave them six weeks to
come up with a business plan to present to Penn
Medicine.
Bittel thinks a 2016 show is possible. “We
have several spaces we like, and we have deal-
ers on board,” she said. “We are rebuilding re-
lationships with the committees so important
to the show’s success and looking at all the fi-
nancial considerations,” said DiSaia. “We are
building on the history of the show; we like an
April date and looking for new ways to make
it work.”
Bittel and DiSaia said they will meet with the
volunteers and with Penn Medicine in mid-April
and will announce the date and place as soon as
it is approved.
Philadelphia Show
to Be Revived
On March 22, the Minnesota Marine
Art Museum inWinona, Minnesota,
unveiled the 40½" x 68" version of
Emanuel Leutze’s 1851 masterpiece
Washington Crossing the Delaware ,
perhaps the most famous and iconic
American painting.
It was acquired by Mary Burrichter
and Robert A. “Bob” Kierlin, the mar-
ried couple who played an important
role in founding the museum and are
now “collecting partners.” (Kierlin
helped launch Fastenal, aWinona-based
industrial supply company.) The sale
was arranged by Burrichter and dealer
Dr. John Driscoll of Driscoll Babcock
Galleries in New York City; the cost
was not revealed.
According to the museum, Leutze
painted three versions of his famous im-
age. The earliest version was destroyed in Germany during
the Second World War. A near replica, though much larg-
er at 149" x 255", is at the Metropolitan Museum of Art
in New York City. The Minnesota Marine Art Museum’s
version had been owned privately for the past 164 years.
For most of the past 40 years, it has been on loan and dis-
played in the reception area of the West Wing of the White
House in Washington, D.C. The painting had been previ-
ously exhibited at the New York Crystal Palace in 1853, the
Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in 1854, and at the
Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1895.
Washington Crossing the Delaware joins a collection of
Hudson River school paintings, along with works by Thom-
as Cole, Asher B. Durand, John Frederick Kensett, Frederic
Church, Jasper Cropsey, and Martin Johnson Heade.
Washington Crossing the Delaware Goes from White House to Winona,
Minnesota
Photo courtesy Minnesota Marine Art Museum.
by Lita Solis-Cohen
Winterthur recently announced two im-
portant acquisitions.
John Shearer Chest Made for Salome
Kramer
At the Furniture Forum (March 4-7)
Winterthur announced the purchase of a
chest of drawers made by John Shearer
(worked 1790-1820) for Salome Kramer
of Frederick County, Maryland, in 1809.
Shearer signed the walnut, oak, and pop-
lar chest eight times, dated it, and wrote
for whom it was made. The purchase of
this chest of drawers advances Winter-
thur’s goal of continuing to broaden the
geographic scope of its collection through
acquisition of objects made and used in
the American South. The chest was ac-
quired from Sumpter Priddy III of Alex-
andria, Virginia, the dealer who brought
it to the Delaware Antiques Show in No-
vember 2014.
In her 2011 book, The Furniture of John
Shearer, 1790-1820: “A True North Brit-
ain” in the Southern Backcountry, Eliz-
abeth A. Davison reported that between
circa 1790 and circa 1808 Shearer was a
householder on tax lists, first in Berkeley
County, Virginia, then, more specifical-
ly, in Martinsburg. In 1800, he moved to
Frederick County, Maryland, and in 1810
returned to Virginia’s Piedmont where he
made furniture and constructed houses
in Loudon County before disappearing
altogether from the records in 1818. For
evidence of his cabinetmaking practices,
Loyalist political views, business deal-
ings, and geographical movements, she
turned to his furniture, including Salome
Kramer’s chest.
Davison writes that this chest express-
es Shearer’s distinctive “North Britain”
(lowland Scottish) political aesthetic
and identifies it as one of only three case
pieces that Shearer decorated with a drop
pendant at the center of the skirt, shaped
to echo the inlaid swag at the center of
the top drawer. Shearer adorned the front
with inlay inscribed with details that Da-
vison has called “a memorial to those who
fought in the battles of Trafalgar and Wa-
gram, and in a series of naval skirmishes
in the Mediterranean and West Indies”
and “one of the most exuberant of all of
Shearer’s loyalist expressions.” These in-
clude “Victory to the Great Duke Charles
of Austria” inscribed in the center lozenge
of the top drawer, “The Immortal Lion
Ad Ld Nelson” inscribed in the crowned
banner above the lozenge, and “Ad Coch-
ron” inscribed in the pendant below the
lozenge, all of which reflected news from
the local papers. Davison explains that
the Great Duke Charles of Austria fought
Napoleon at the battle of Wagram near Vi-
enna, July 5 and 6, 1809. Admiral Nelson
defeated Napoleon’s combined French
and Spanish fleet at the battle of Trafal-
gar, and “Ad Cochron” refers to Admiral
Alexander Cochrane, who defeated the
Franco-Spanish fleet at Santo Domingo
in 1806.
Above the masks from which the cen-
ter pendants hang are inscribed the names
“Colenwood” (proper right) and “North-
esk” (proper left). “Colenwood” refers to
Vice Admiral Cuthbert Collingwood, the
second in command at the battle of Trafal-
gar; “Northesk” refers to Lord Northesk,
the titled Admiral William Carnegie, the
third in command at Trafalgar. Shearer
inscribed a boss inlaid at the center of the
top’s front edge “To Miss Salome Kram-
mer” [sic] and a banner suspended from
swags on the second drawer “By Shear-
er.” Inscriptions on the lozenge inlays,
drawn with fouled anchors, above the
drawer pulls on the top drawer read “Glo-
ry and Death” (proper left) and “Death
and Glory” (proper right).
In addition to the inscribed inlays,
Shearer marked the interior of the case
eight times. On the top drawer he wrote
his name “Shearer” on the left and again
on the interior back, adding the date 1809.
On the exterior back of the top drawer he
wrote “Shearer Joiner 1809” and on the
exterior proper right “Shearer” again. On
the second drawer on the inside back, he
wrote his name and date 1809 again, and
on the back of the second drawer “Shear-
er a joiner from Edinburgh.” On the third
drawer bottom, he wrote “By Shearer to
Miss Sarah Cramer [sic] 1809” and on
the interior of the case behind the third
drawer “Made to Miss Salome Kramer &
payed for by me John Shearer Sept 1809.”
Davison surmises that Shearer had made
Salome’s chest not as a present but, along
with a similar chest for Salome’s sister
Christina, as part of a barter agreement
with their father, Johann Adam Kramer.
With his brother, Baltzer Kramer
(1749-1813), a famous glassblower, Jo-
hann Adam Kramer (1755-1828) em-
igrated from Germany to work in the
Stiegel glass manufactory in Manheim,
Pennsylvania. When the factory closed,
both brothers moved their families to
Frederick County, Maryland, where they
worked for John Frederick Amelung.
Aside from replaced brasses, minor
patches to the ogee feet, and a reworked
finish, this chest of drawers had suffered
few alterations. Announcing its acqui-
sition at the Furniture Forum, curator
Joshua W. Lane called it a particularly
noteworthy addition to the Winterthur
collection.
In honor of Wendy Cooper, who retired
in June 2013 after serving as Winterthur’s
curator of American furniture since 1995,
Winterthur has acquired a dressing bureau
with a stenciled label in its top drawer.
The label was used by Isaac Vose & Son
in Boston from 1820 through 1825. The
dressing bureau was acquired through
furniture scholar and broker Clark Pearce,
who identified the piece in a private col-
lection and facilitated its private sale.
Pearce, who with Robert D. Mussey Jr.
has done research on the Seymour shop
in Boston, found that in 1817, Thomas
Seymour closed his shop and wareroom
and became shop foreman—first for Bos-
ton cabinetmaker James Barker, then, in
1819, for Isaac Vose, Joshua Coates, and
Vose’s son, Isaac Vose Jr., whom Vose Sr.
and Coates had recently brought into part-
nership under the name “Vose, Coates, &
Co.” After Coates’s death in 1819, the
firm continued as “Isaac Vose & Son.”
Isaac Vose Sr. died in 1823, and Seymour
continued as shop foreman for Isaac Vose
Jr., overseeing production of Regency and
Grecian-style furniture until Vose closed
the shop and sold the furniture, lumber,
tools, and other effects at auction in 1825.
Pearce wrote in his report to Winter-
thur: “The craftsmanship of this dressing
bureau is superb, underscoring Thomas
Seymour’s hands-on role in the shop. In
fact, the drawer blades above the low-
er three drawers have script pencil in-
scriptions ‘N2,’ ‘N3,’ and ‘N4,’ all in
Seymour’s distinctive hand. Seymour’s
artistic ability to create thoughtful com-
positions in wood grain is evident in
his use of branch veneers on the drawer
fronts, cut from the same bolt, alternating
direction on each drawer. The projecting
‘frieze’ (upper) drawer is veneered with
horizontally bookmatched branch veneers
to contain the drama of the three drawers
below, and re-direct the eye to the archi-
tectural structure of the chest of drawers.”
The dressing bureau retains all its origi-
nal hardware, fire-gilt mounts, and mirror
glass. The drawer knobs, stamped “Bar-
ron’s Patent,” were made by the Birming-
ham, England hardware manufacturer
Barron’s, following a design patented in
1818, according to Pearce. These knobs
have been observed only on pieces that
are labeled, documented, or attributed to
Isaac Vose & Son, suggesting that Sey-
mour and Vose had an exclusive impor-
tation relationship with the Barron’s firm
in England.
The Vose dressing bureau completes
the story of the top furniture shops in the
second decade of the 19th century for
Winterthur, which has furniture from the
same period made in Philadelphia and
New York. Furniture by Isaac Vose (and
Thomas Seymour in the second phase of
his career) may not be as well known as
that by Duncan Phyfe, Charles-Honoré
Lannuier, and Joseph Barry, but it is every
bit as notable. This dressing bureau com-
plements the dressing bureau by Philadel-
phia cabinetmaker Walter Pennery made
in the same period in Winterthur’s collec-
tion.
Winterthur Announces Acquisitions
Vose Dressing Bureau