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Maine Antique Digest, December 2016 25-C
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FEATURE -
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pictures worked in the 1750s to 1770s in Boston, where
girls were often sent to school. One wonders if it was not
a later addition. It is a remarkable survivor; the chair’s
foundation is also intact! Mrs. J. Insley Blair bought the
chair from Ginsburg & Levy in New York City in 1926
and gave it to the Met in 1950.
Jennifer N. Johnson wrote the chapter on upholstery
and spoke about it at the symposium. She told how
Caleb Gardner Jr. survived a bad patch in business but
continued to work in Newport at least until 1774, when
he billed Abraham Redwood $25 for “making suit of
Crimson Silk Bed & Window Curtains” and another $5
“To my Attendance.” (According to Johnson, the dollar
amounts were “Spanish milled dollars.”) The framework
for the upholstery was provided by John Townsend, who
several months earlier charged Redwood £7.10.1 for “1
Mehogany Bedsted with Cornish flooted Posts” [
sic
] and
£1.4.0 for “4 Window Cornishes.” Gardner charged a
Mrs. Wright £40 for an easy chair. Then he moved to
Providence where he worked until 1796. After his death
his trade was carried on by his daughter Eleanor, who is
listed as an “upholstress” in Providence directories from
1824 until 1838.
In her chapter in the catalog on Rhode Island seating,
Johnson suggests that upholstered, framed chairs
were made in Rhode Island earlier than previously
supposed. While Boston had a strong influence on early
Rhode Island chairs, she suggests that turning patterns
differentiate them. How to tell a Newport chair from a
Boston chair is not clear in the catalog or in the exhibition.
Several catalog entries say “probably Rhode Island” and
compare turnings to those found on chairs attributed to
John Gaines III of Portsmouth, New Hampshire.
After the Revolutionary War, Rhode Island craftsmen
made furniture in the Neoclassical style, influenced in
part by New York fashions. In time, small shops were
replaced by large warehouses retailing goods, some of
them made elsewhere.
Nancy Goyne Evans has spent years researching
Windsor chairs—her books are the bibles on the subject—
and she wrote the chapter on Windsor chairmaking in
Rhode Island, 1760-1830, and spoke at the symposium
about Windsors, explaining that Rhode Island was the
second center of Windsor chairmaking in America after
Philadelphia and was the first in New England.
While documents reveal little about the purchase of
Windsor chairs by private individuals, Windsors were
the first seating purchased for the Redwood Library in
Newport. Its building, designed by Peter Harrison, was
completed in 1751. In 1764 low-back chairs painted
green were ordered. The Reverend Ezra Stiles, an
honorary member of the library and later president of
Yale, was painted by Samuel King seated in one of them,
1770-76. The painting of Stiles in the Yale collection is
in the exhibition.
An invoice dated 1767 shows that Aaron Lopez, a well-
established Newport merchant, was exporting Windsor
chairs in the coastal trade, and other business documents
show he also shipped both round-
back and high-back chairs with
wooden bottoms to the Caribbean
(all part of the slave trade, which is
not mentioned). The Lopez papers
list the name of Jonathan Cahoone, a
Newport maker. Cahoone submitted
a petition for losses sustained during
the Revolutionary War that included
dozens of chairs made and many
more sawed out. Newport never
recovered prominence as a port after
the Revolutionary War because of
British occupation and destruction.
By the end of the war, Providence
had become the commercial center
of Rhode Island. It is difficult to
identify the chairmakers active
before the Revolutionary War. They
did not brand their work. But post-
Revolutionary War Windsor chair
makers, such as Joseph Vickary and
the Proud brothers, supplied seating
for public buildings and private
citizens. During the economically
turbulent years of the 1780s, when
Rhode Island was the last of the
original 13 colonies to join the
Union and worthless paper money
was being circulated, some unusual
Windsor designs appeared. In the
1790s, the free flow of Rhode
Islanders across the border with
Connecticut to settle on more productive land resulted
in chairs that exhibit characteristics of the Tracy family,
such as the socketing of legs inside the plank seat so that
the leg tops are not visible on the top surface of the seat,
a practice that became common everywhere after 1800.
Evans documents trade in NewYork Windsors shipped
to Rhode Island in the last decade of the 18th century
with the result that Rhode Island Windsor seating in the
1790s has a New York character. John Brown owned
two or more bow-back brace-back Windsor chairs
with upholstered seats labeled by brothers William and
Thomas Ash, New York makers. In the 19th century,
square backs and bamboo turnings were introduced. Sales
practices changed; the warehouses offered moderately
priced Windsors imported from large production centers,
New York City and Newark, New Jersey, alongside
local products. There is an arrow-back Windsor in the
exhibition with painted decoration marked by Christian
M. Nestell, who advertised in the
Providence Patriot
on August 28, 1822, that he had a wareroom on South
Main Street where he had “a full assortment of Fancy
Chairs of the Newark make, which are superior to any
other chairs of the kind; they excel in finish those made
in New York.”
Of the 250 clocks recorded in RIFA (most of which are
tall-case clocks) about one-fifth have histories tracing
them back to their original owners, mostly prominent
merchants, political leaders, landowners, ships’ captains,
and at least one physician. Gary R. Sullivan of Canton,
Massachusetts, spoke at the symposium about clocks and
contributed to the catalog. He pointed out that in the 18th
century Rhode Island was in the forefront of clockmaking
and developed innovative clock case designs.
William Claggett, New England’s most prolific pre-
Revolutionary War clockmaker, is Rhode Island’s
earliest. Over 50 Claggett clocks survive. Born in
London, Claggett immigrated to Boston and arrived in
Newport in 1716. He made clocks there until 1740. His
earliest have square engraved brass dials with imported
cast brass spandrels and are in walnut cases with
sarcophagus tops. The earliest clock in the exhibition by
Claggett, made in Newport, 1725-35, has an arched dial
and is in a veneered case with a sarcophagus top.
JamesWady, who marriedWilliamClaggett’s daughter,
made nine clocks with complicated movements in
sophisticated cases for the wealthiest citizens of Newport.
Agroup of fiveWady clocks with double-pediment hoods
have concave pendulum doors with carved shells. Some
of the shells are gilded, and all are carved from a solid
block of mahogany. They are considered the pinnacle of
American design. The one in the exhibition, pictured in
the catalog, is on loan from Winterthur.
Thomas Claggett, William Claggett’s son, made clocks
in the second half of the 18th century in Newport. Eleven
clocks by Thomas are known, including two dwarf
clocks, all with block-and-shell doors. The one from a
private collection in the exhibition plays two tunes. Its
hood is typical of Newport with cornice molding with
three short plinths supporting flame finials with stop-
fluted urns, a raised central keystone, a blocked door with
carved shell, and a base with a raised panel of figured
mahogany. It is one of six musical Rhode Island clocks
that survive. The use of blocking and shells carved from
the solid persisted longer in Providence and Warwick.
Clock cases from Warwick are countrified versions of
Newport and Providence clocks.
Not all the movements from the Colonial era are
housed in cases with block-and-shell decorations. Some
have solid doors. Their hoods have arched pediments
ornamented with finials, a keystone in the entablature,
and fluted colonettes at the corners. The bases are
unframed on early examples and framed with applied
The elaborate compass-star-and-line inlay that decorates the slant-lid desk and
the desk-and-bookcase is most frequently seen on Massachusetts furniture.
However, the slant-front desk was probably made in Bristol, Rhode Island, where
it descended in the Warwell family. The similarity in construction and decoration
of the desk-and-bookcase suggests that they were made by the same hand. Bristol
was part of Massachusetts until 1747, when it was transferred to Rhode Island,
thus the dominance of Massachusetts styles.
This Newport dining table, 1710-30, is the best preserved
of a large group of surviving gate-leg tables from Colonial
Rhode Island. It was sold at Northeast Auctions in 2003
and is now in a private collection. The asymmetrical design
of the turning—the two ball turnings are separated by
an asymmetrically turned ring that flares out toward the
bottom—and the fact that the legs are turned fromvertically
laminated boards are Rhode Island characteristics.
This tea table, signed and dated 1764 by Christopher
Townsend, is the only one that is signed and dated of the
more than 60 known tables of this form. It is raised on
slender cabriole legs ending in feet with pointed toes,
and its severity and restraint are quintessentially Rhode
Island. Tables of this type were made in the 1740s into the
1760s when tea drinking was in fashion. Private collection
[RIF18]. Photo courtesy Freeman Productions, LLC.
John Goddard made this mahogany slant-lid desk when he
was just 21 years old. He is presumed to have apprenticed
with JobTownsend Sr., whose daughterHannah hemarried.
Six of his sons became cabinetmakers—Daniel, Townsend,
Job, Henry, Stephen, and Thomas—as did a number of his
nephews. The label on the desk, “Made by John Goddard
of Newport on Rhode Island in New England in the year
of our Lord 1745,”
is an advertisement for furniture for
export—important income for many cabinetmakers. The
desk is on loan from the Chipstone Foundation.