Maine Antique Digest, December 2016

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26-C Maine Antique Digest, December 2016
- FEATURE -
26-C
panels in later ones. A regional characteristic is ogee
molding between the waist and the base as opposed to
a cove-shaped molding on other New England clocks.
More than a dozen Rhode Island cases with works signed
by London makers survive from the Colonial period, and
many of these are in the most elaborate cases.
After the Revolutionary War, painted iron dials slowly
replaced engraved sheet-brass dials, and as the 19th
century approached, Federal cases with veneers and
inlaid surfaces came into fashion. Boston, only 50 miles
away from Rhode Island, dominated clock production in
the 19th century. The prolific Willard family exported
their clocks throughout New England and influenced
local production. Seven clocks with Roxbury-style cases
house movements signed by Bristol, Rhode Island,
clockmaker Josiah Gooding. The cases are so close to
cases made in Boston that they raise the question as to
whether they were actually made there. Sullivan said
they were probably made in Rhode Island, because “the
pattern of the fretwork is not what you expect to find in
Boston.”
The big blow to Rhode Island clockmaking was Simon
Willard’s so-called patent timepiece, known today
as the banjo clock. Wall clocks were more affordable.
Willard allowed a close circle of associates to make his
clocks, and no Rhode Island clockmaker was granted
that right. When Willard’s patent expired in 1816, a few
clockmakers made a Rhode Island version. As Rhode
Island clockmaking was fading, Connecticut factories
were producing even cheaper clocks, many with
wooden movements. Rhode Island clockmakers became
shopkeepers and branched into jewelry making.
Sullivan contended that clocks are an important part
of any regional study. They are often marked with the
maker’s name and the town where the clockmaker
worked; the clocks’ cabinetmakers who made the cases
often worked in the same town and sometimes marked
the case.
An example is a clock case with a maker’s label inside its
backboard reading “CABINETAND CHAIR-MAKING /
In all its Branches performed by Halyburton & Carpenter,
/ On the Main Street, a little North of the Baptist / Meeting-
House / Providence.” A photograph of this label was sent
to Sullivan just three days before the symposium. The
label allows Sullivan to identify as the work of Halyburton
a six-shell chest-on-chest with a pitched pediment, on loan
to the exhibition from the Cleveland Museum of Art. In
the catalog, the chest-on-chest is attributed to the same
unknown cabinetmaker as three desk-and-bookcases all
made in Providence. On the bottom drawer of the prospect
section of one of these desk-and-bookcases in graphite is
the signature “J Halyburton.” Kane thought this might be
the same James Halyburton who worked in partnership
with Benjamin Cole in Warren, Rhode Island, but could
find no record that he moved to Providence, although he
married a Providence woman. Sullivan’s discovery of
the label on the clock case shows that Halyburton was
indeed in business in Providence. “Now we can attribute
sophisticated pieces of Providence furniture to a specific
maker,” he said.
Zimmerman pointed out how this exhibition and
catalog demonstrate the newest ways of studying
American furniture at a time when scholars have easy
and quick access to new evidence, scientific methods for
wood identifications, a large bibliography, and online
genealogy. More important, the online archive allows
Kane and her team to correct assumptions and reassign
makers, thus ushering in a new and exciting age for the
study of American furniture.
Newport furniture has had a special fascination for
collectors for the last century and long before such
advanced studies began. Perhaps it is because the
block-and-shell forms have been thought an original,
distinctively American design. Of the 33 pieces of
American furniture sold at auction for more than a
million dollars since 1986, a dozen were made in Rhode
Island, 11 in Newport by Goddards or Townsends and
one from Providence (a five-shell blockfront desk-and-
bookcase, which sold at Christie’s in January 1997 for
$1,047,500). At the top of the list is the $12.1 million
paid for the Nicholas Brown desk-and-bookcase sold at
Christie’s in June 1989 to Israel Sack for a client said
to be Robert Bass and underbid by Doris Duke. The
$8.4 million Nicholas Brown scalloped-top tea table,
attributed to John Goddard, sold at Sotheby’s to Albert
Sack in January 2005, and Christopher Townsend’s
Appleton desk-and-bookcase sold at Sotheby’s January
1999 for $8,252,500. In January 2011, $5,682,500 was
paid for the kneehole bureau made by John Goddard
for his daughter Catherine; it was a record for the form,
topping the previous record, $3,632,500, which was
paid in January 1996 for James Goddard Jr.’s kneehole
bureau made for Ruth and Samuel Whitehorne, which
is in the exhibition. The $4,732,500 paid at Christie’s
in June 1998 for Sarah Slocum’s three-shell chest of
drawers with the label of John Townsend is a record for
any American chest of drawers.
Some signed pieces in the exhibition have sold
at auction in recent years for a lot less. The early
18th-century fall-front walnut desk with the hidden
compartments sold at Skinner in 2013 for $270,000 to
the MFA. In 2011 when Skinner offered a curly maple
high chest of drawers with the initials “AS” and the
date 1749 on the backboards, it remained unsold. In
August 2012 it was offered again and sold for $22,515
to the Patnaude family collection, which lent it to the
exhibition. In the catalog Patricia Kane calls it one of
the earliest pieces of signed and dated Rhode Island
furniture and identifies the maker as Amos Stafford,
a Coventry house carpenter and farmer. “No other
woodworker with these initials is known to have worked
in Rhode Island in 1749,” she writes and also points out
that he was aware of what was happening in Newport,
comparing the chest to a high chest made in Newport
by Christopher Townsend. A needlework sampler and
family register that descended with the high chest help
identify the original owners, Capt. John Waterman Jr.
and Marcy Stafford Waterman of Coventry, Rhode
Island, who married in 1742. Marcy Stafford Waterman
was a first cousin of the cabinetmaker’s father.
It takes effort, but those who spend time at the
exhibition and look carefully and read the labels and then
delve into the catalog will find themselves transported to
another time and another place where craftsmen and their
customers become acquaintances, and visitors will leave
knowing there is much more to learn.
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