[1]
Margaretta M. Lovell, “‘Such Furniture as Will Be Most Profitable’: The Business of Cabinetmaking in Eighteenth-Century Newport,” Winterthur Portfolio 26, no. 1 (Spring 1991): 44–48. Morrison H. Heckscher, John Townsend, Newport Cabinetmaker (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2005), pp. 56, 61. For further comment, see Jay Robert Stiefel, review of John Townsend, Newport Cabinetmaker in Journal of the Early Republic (Winter 2006): 672–74.
[2] The Nicholas Disbrowe inscription cited as seventeenth-century in early-twentieth-century publications is not authentic. See Penrose R. Hoopes, “Notes on Some Colonial Cabinetmakers of Hartford,” Antiques 23, no. 5 (May 1933): 171; Patricia E. Kane, “The Seventeenth-Century Furniture of the Connecticut Valley: The Hadley Chest Reappraised,” in Arts of the Anglo-American Community in the Seventeenth Century, edited by Ian M. G. Quimby (Charlottesville, Va.: University Press of Virginia for the Winterthur Museum, 1975), p. 79. David B. Warren, Michael K. Brown, Elizabeth Ann Coleman, and Emily Ballew Neff, American Decorative Arts and Paintings in the Bayou Bend Collection (Houston, Tex.: Museum of Fine Arts in association with Princeton University Press, 1998), no. F31. Christopher Gilbert states, “no [English] furniture marked by a maker is known that can be dated before 1700, although some may date slightly before,” in Pictorial Dictionary of Marked London Furniture, 1700–1840 (Leeds, Eng.: Furniture History Society and W. S. Maney and Son, 1996), p. 2. According to Gilbert, John Gumley carved his name and the date May 1703 into a large mirror at Chatsworth (Pictorial Dictionary, p. 4). Philadelphia: Three Centuries of American Art (Philadelphia: Philadelphia Museum of Art, 1976), pp. 13–14; Cathryn J. McElroy, “Furniture in Philadelphia: The First Fifty Years,” in American Furniture and Its Makers, edited by Ian M. G. Quimby, special issue, Winterthur Portfolio 13 (1979): 76–77; Jack L. Lindsey, Worldly Goods: The Arts of Early Pennsylvania, 1680–1758 (Philadelphia: Philadelphia Museum of Art, 1999), pp. 133–34. According to Lindsey’s problematic biographical sketch, Evans, born in 1679, completed his apprenticeship in 1704 at age twenty-five yet sold William Penn a chest of drawers in 1701 and worked as a ship’s joiner from 1703 to 1709. These biographical references may describe more than one individual of that name.
[3] A second chest of drawers with Beake’s inscribed name has no accompanying date (Decorative Arts Photographic Collection, file no. 78.877, Winterthur Museum, Winterthur, Delaware) [hereafter cited as DAPC].
[4] Quoted in McElroy, “Furniture in Philadelphia,” pp. 73, 79. Benno M. Forman challenges the Beakes-Till relationship but does not cite McElroy’s article in “The Chest of Drawers in America, 1635–1730: The Origins of the Joined Chest of Drawers,” Winterthur Portfolio 20, no. 1 (Spring 1985): 28. Margaret Berwind Schiffer, Furniture and Its Makers of Chester County, Pennsylvania (1966; reprint, Exton, Pa.: Schiffer Publishing, 1978), pp. 22–23, figs. 2, 3.
[5] William C. Ketchum Jr., with the Museum of American Folk Art, American Cabinetmakers: Marked American Furniture, 1640–1940 (New York: Crown Publishers, 1995), pp. 107–8. Benno M. Forman, American Seating Furniture, 1630–1730: An Interpretive Catalogue (New York: W. W. Norton, 1988), pp. 260–66. Forman notes another mark struck into the back of the crest rail of a Philadelphia leather-upholstered side chair of 1695 to 1710. This unidentified symbol is “too deliberate to be an accident, although its meaning is at the moment obscure” (p. 296).
[6] Adam Bowett, English Furniture from Charles II to Queen Anne, 1660–1714 (Woodbridge, Suffolk, Eng.: Antique Collectors’ Club, 2002), pp. 204–5. See also Gilbert, Pictorial Dictionary, pp. 3–4. R. W. Symonds, “Old English Furniture and Its Makers: The Problem of Identification,” in Ambrose Beal, The London Furniture Makers from the Restoration to the Victorian Era, 1660–1840 (London: B. T. Batsford, 1953), p. 216. The labels are reproduced as pls. 88–93 in William Macpherson Hornor Jr., Blue Book, Philadelphia Furniture: William Penn to George Washington (Philadelphia: privately printed, 1935). Savery’s life and work are summarized in Philip D. Zimmerman, “William Savery,” in American National Biography (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 19: 320–21. The walnut chest and label are illustrated in “Another Savery Label,” Antiques 9, no. 2 (February 1926): 77. The 1771 reference is in Thomas Affleck’s January 2 bill to John Cadwalader that lists “2 Commode Card Tables” and “2 Mahogany Commode Sophias for the Recesses” among many other items. For discussion of the terminology, see Philip D. Zimmerman, “A Methodological Study in the Identification of Some Important Philadelphia Chippendale Furniture,” in Quimby, ed., American Furniture and Its Makers, pp. 193–208; see also pp. 200, 204.
[7] Judith Coolidge Hughes, “The Labels of John Elliott Jr.,” Antiques 91, no. 4 (April 1967): 514–17. “Collectors’ Notes: John Elliott Sr.,” Antiques 107, no. 5 (May 1975): 1068. The first American label appears in Alfred Coxe Prime, “John Elliott: Cabinet and Looking-Glass Maker of Philadelphia,” Pennsylvania Museum Bulletin 19, no. 85 (April 1924): 135. Mary Ellen Hayward, “The Elliotts of Philadelphia: Emphasis on the Looking Glass Trade, 1755–1810” (master’s thesis, University of Delaware, 1971), pp. 25–34.
[8] Morrison H. Heckscher, American Furniture in The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Late Colonial Period: The Queen Anne and Chippendale Styles (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art and Random House, 1985), no. 81. Clement E. Conger and Alexandra W. Rollins, Treasures of State: Fine and Decorative Arts in the Diplomatic Reception Rooms of the U.S. Department of State (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1991), pp. 94–95, no. 13. For many labeled Frothingham pieces of furniture, see Richard H. Randall Jr., “Benjamin Frothingham,” in Boston Furniture of the Eighteenth Century, edited by Walter Muir Whitehill (Boston: Colonial Society of Massachusetts, 1974), pp. 223–49. Only one label each for Job and Edmund Townsend is known. For a flat-top desk-and-bookcase labeled by Job Townsend, see Christopher P. Monkhouse and Thomas S. Michie, American Furniture in Pendleton House (Providence: Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, 1986), pp. 94–96, no. 38. For a bureau table bearing the label of Edmund Townsend, see Edwin J. Hipkiss, Eighteenth-Century American Arts: The M. and M. Karolik Collection (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press for the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 1941), no. 68. Heckscher, John Townsend, Newport Cabinetmaker, pp. 61–64.
[9] Bernard & S. Dean Levy advertisement, Antiques 94, no. 3 (September 1978): 356; Betty Ring, “Check List of Looking-Glass and Frame Makers and Merchants Known by Their Labels,” Antiques 119, no. 5 (May 1981): 1182.
[10] Meyric R. Rogers, “George Shipley: His Furniture and His Label, A Set of Side Chairs,” Antiques 79, no. 4 (April 1961): 374; Martha Gandy Fales, “A Classical Sideboard,” Antiques 79, no. 4 (April 1961): 375. Benjamin A. Hewitt, Patricia E. Kane, and Gerald W. R. Ward, The Work of Many Hands: Card Tables in Federal America, 1790–1820 (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Art Gallery, 1982), no. 32. Illustrated in Ketchum, American Cabinetmakers, p. 123.
[11] Illustrated in Joseph Downs and Ruth Ralston, A Loan Exhibition of New York State Furniture (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1934), n.p. Illustrated in Hornor, Blue Book, pl. 432; Robert Bishop, Centuries and Styles of the American Chair, 1640–1970 (New York: E. P. Dutton & Co., 1972), fig. 314. Maureen O’Brien Quimby, “The Political Art of James Akin,” Winterthur Portfolio 7 (1972): 59–112. Illustrated in Robert T. Trump, “Joseph B. Barry, Philadelphia Cabinetmaker,” Antiques 107, no. 1 (January 1975): 161, fig. 5.
[12] Philip D. Zimmerman et al., Sewell C. Biggs Museum of American Art: A Catalogue, 2 vols. (Dover, Del.: Biggs Museum, 2002), 1: no. 81.
[13] The motivation behind leaving a signature seems similar to that of western explorer William Clark, who scratched his name and date in the rock face of Pompeys Piller, Montana, in 1806. Cited in Kathleen Matilda Catalano, “Cabinetmaking in Philadelphia, 1820–1840” (master’s thesis, University of Delaware, 1972), p. 111. Nancy E. Richards and Nancy Goyne Evans, New England Furniture at Winterthur (Winterthur, Del.: Winterthur Museum, 1997), no. 182. A signature on a sideboard eluded separate examinations by a dealer and an independent consultant as well as former owners and interested parties. Viewing the signature requires peering around the lower center cupboard doors to see the back surface of the fixed front panels. Philip D. Zimmerman, “A Rare Eight-Legged Federal Sideboard, Connecticut, 1795–1805” (unpublished report for Bernard & S. Dean Levy, 1997); Thomas Kugelman, Alice Kugelman, and Robert Lionetti, Connecticut Valley Furniture: Eliphalet Chapin and His Contemporaries, 1750–1800 (Hartford: Connecticut Historical Society, 2005), pp. 368–70, no. 169. Another sideboard bears its maker’s signature on a framing member underneath the top and is visible only when the top is removed. Zimmerman, Sewell C. Biggs Museum, 1: no. 49.
[14] Furniture historians Thomas and Alice Kugelman and Robert Lionetti cite several examples of this practice in their study of Hartford-area case furniture; Kugelman, Kugelman, and Lionetti, Connecticut Valley Furniture, pp. 114, 148–50, 162–64, 196, 366. Deborah Ducoff-Barone, “Philadelphia Furniture Makers, 1800–1815,” Antiques 145, no. 5 (May 1991): 994. Schiffer, Furniture and Its Makers of Chester County, pp. 100, 101, 316. The 1800 and 1810 United States Census also records Gregg in Kennett Square. Chester County inventories #8938, as cited in Schiffer, Furniture and Its Makers of Chester County, pp. 100–101. Ducoff-Barone, “Philadelphia Furniture Makers, 1800–1815,” 983, pl. 3.
[15] Donna-Belle Garvin, “Two High Chests of the Dunlap School,” Historical New Hampshire 35, no. 2 (Summer 1980): 165V.; Richards and Evans, New England Furniture at Winterthur, no. 175. Garvin, “Two High Chests of the Dunlap School,” pp. 180–83.
[16] Israel Sack advertisement, Antiques 115, no. 5 (May 1979): inside front cover. Peter Benes, Old-Town and the Waterside: Two Hundred Years of Tradition and Change in Newbury, Newburyport, and West Newbury, 1635–1835 (Newburyport, Mass.: Historical Society of Old Newbury, 1986), pp. 50–51, no. 23. Elizabeth Noyes (1731–1816) married James Smith III (1725–1787) of Newbury. She received furniture from her parents. Deborah D. Waters, Delaware Collections in the Museum of the Historical Society of Delaware (Wilmington, Del.: Historical Society of Delaware, 1984), pp. 30–31, no. 12. Collections of the Biggs Museum of American Art, Dover, Delaware. Inconsistent nail-hole patterns indicate that the backboards are not original to the looking-glass frame. This looking glass seems to be the same one described with a different inscription in Charles G. Dorman, Delaware Cabinetmakers and Allied Artisans, 1655–1855 (Wilmington, Del.: Historical Society of Delaware, 1960), p. 88. Margaret Burke Clunie, “Salem Federal Furniture” (master’s thesis, University of Delaware, 1976), pp. 158, 210.
[17] Israel Sack advertisement, Antiques 56, no. 6 (December 1949): 399; M. Ada Young, “Five Secretaries and the Cogswells,” Antiques 88, no. 4 (October 1965): 479–81. Morrison H. Heckscher interprets the inscription as “I [?] Back” in American Furniture in The Metropolitan Museum of Art, no. 179. Gerald W. R. Ward, American Case Furniture in the Mabel Brady Garvan and Other Collections at Yale University (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Art Gallery, 1988), nos. 62, 67, 160, 168, 177.
[18] Fitch to Pease, May 8, 1705, Fitch Letterbook, American Antiquarian Society, as quoted in Forman, American Seating Furniture, p. 264. Benes, Old-Town and the Waterside, p. 51. Ward, American Case Furniture, pp. 169–70, no. 80. Brock Jobe, Portsmouth Furniture: Masterworks from the New Hampshire Seacoast (Boston: Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities, 1993), pp. 109–10, no. 9.
[19] Heckscher, American Furniture in The Metropolitan Museum of Art, no. 181. Philip D. Zimmerman with David Jorgensen, “A Grecian Card Table by William Fisk and Thomas Wightman of Boston,” Antiques 169, no. 5 (May 2006): 146–51.
[20] Account Book of maritime joiner Gregory Marlow, as quoted in Philadelphia: Three Centuries of American Art, p. 15.
[21] Victor Chinnery argues that initial and name brands on seventeenth-century-style furniture and earlier are ownership rather than makers’ marks (Victor Chinnery, Oak Furniture: The British Tradition [Woodbridge, Suffolk, Eng.: Antique Collectors’ Club, 1979], pp. 57–59). Bernard D. Cotton treats struck makers’ marks as routine in his study of late-eighteenth- and nineteenth-century chair making, The English Regional Chair (Woodbridge, Suffolk, Eng.: Antique Collectors’ Club, 1990). Bowett, English Furniture from Charles II to Queen Anne, pp. 89–90. Gilbert, Pictorial Dictionary, p. 3. Philadelphia Gazette, September 22, 1763, as quoted in Nancy Goyne Evans, Windsor-Chair Making in America: From Craft Shop to Consumer (Hanover, N.H.: University Press of New England, 2006), p. 80; see also p. 81.
[22] For a detailed study of similarly marked owners’ names, see Myrna Kaye, “Marked Portsmouth Furniture,” Antiques 113, no. 5 (May 1978): 1098–104. Nancy Goyne Evans, “American Painted Seating Furniture: Marketing the Product, 1750–1840,” in Perspectives on American Furniture, edited by Gerald W. R. Ward (New York: W. W. Norton & Co, 1988), pp. 160–64. Thomas Hays advertisement, Daily Advertiser (New York), April 8, 1801, quoted in Rita Susswein Gottesman, The Arts and Crafts in New York, 1800–1804: Advertisements and News Items from New York City Newspapers (New York: New-York Historical Society, 1965), p. 144. Nancy Goyne Evans, American Windsor Chairs (New York: Hudson Hills Press in association with the Winterthur Museum, 1996), pp. 180–83, 205; see also pp. 337–38.
[23] Philadelphia: Three Centuries of American Art, pp. 93–94. Deborah D. Waters, Plain and Ornamental: Delaware Furniture, 1740–1890 (Wilmington: Historical Society of Delaware, 1984), p. 26, no. 14. Philip D. Zimmerman, Delaware Clocks (Dover, Del.: Biggs Museum, 2006), pp. 48–49.
[24] Charles F. Montgomery, American Furniture: The Federal Period (New York: Viking Press, 1966), nos. 30, 110, p. 479. Montgomery speculated that the “SF” mark was possibly that of an owner but more likely that “of a journeyman who made the chairs for Badlam.” Ward, American Case Furniture, pp. 171–77, no. 82. Montgomery, American Furniture: The Federal Period, no. 253. DAPC, 75.292. Ethel Hall Bjerkoe, The Cabinetmakers of America (1957; reprint, New York: Bonanza Books, n.d.), p. 95. Chair marks illustrated in Ketchum, American Cabinetmakers, p. 120. Hewitt, Kane, and Ward, The Work of Many Hands, no. 15. The card table is incorrectly identified as made in Salem rather than Boston-Roxbury. DAPC, 97.829–.830. Richard H. Randall Jr., American Furniture in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (Boston: Museum of Fine Arts, 1965), no. 158; Paul J. Foley, Willard’s Patent Time Pieces: A History of the Weight-Driven Banjo Clock, 1800–1900 (Norwell, Mass.: Roxbury Village Publishing, 2002), p. 251. The author does not illustrate the mark or describe further the furniture form. Anne Rogers Haley, “Boston Cabinetmakers and Allied Craftsmen, 1780–1799: A New Source,” Antiques 149, no. 5 (May 1996): 763.
[25] Quoted in Mabel M. Swan, “Elijah and Jacob Sanderson, Early Salem Cabinetmakers,” Essex Institute Historical Collections 70, no. 4 (October 1934): 331. Hewitt, Kane, and Ward, The Work of Many Hands, no. 19.
[26] Dean A. Fales Jr., “Essex County Furniture—Documented Treasures from Local Collections, 1660–1860,” Essex Institute Historical Collections 101, no. 3 (July 1965): nos. 36, 37; Randall, American Furniture in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, no. 158. For a tambour desk with the same brand, see Sotheby’s, The Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Lammot du Pont Copeland, New York, January 19, 2002, lot 316. Montgomery, American Furniture: The Federal Period, no. 322. [Henry Wyckoff Belknap], “Furniture Exported by Cabinetmakers of Salem,” from notes left by Henry Wyckoff Belknap, Essex Institute Historical Collections 85, no. 4 (October 1949): 350–55. DAPC, 73.341. Israel Sack advertisement, Antiques 72, no. 6 (December 1957): inside front cover. Wendy Cooper and Kemble Widmer II, “Seeing Double: Winterthur’s Sanderson Card Table Finds Its Mate,” Catalogue of Antiques and Fine Art 4, no. 6 (2004): 274–79.
[27] Martha G. Fales, “The Shorts, Newburyport Cabinetmakers,” Essex Institute Historical Collections 102, no. 3 (July 1966): 233–34, figs. 3–5. David L. Barquist, American Tables and Looking Glasses in the Mabel Brady Garvan and Other Collections at Yale University (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Art Gallery, 1992), no. 94; Bjerkoe, Cabinetmakers of America, p. 201.
[28] Ward, American Case Furniture, p. 172, no. 82.