Tag Archives: Antiques

April 19, 2013

Patriotic Patterns

By daseger

Given my armchair observance of Patriots’ Day, and then everything that happened on that sad day (and is still happening), I thought I’d retreat into a safe material world and examine some of the patriotic products that were produced in the decades after the American Revolution, some in the new country and some for the new country. It seems appropriate to continue exploring expressions of patriotism; after all, the real anniversary of Lexington and Concord is today. Right after the Revolution (literally) home furnishings which reflected the revolutionary spirit were produced both in this country and oddly enough, in Britain. Maybe it’s not odd:  Britain was in the midst of the Industrial Revolution which was initiated by what I’ve always considered a uniquely pragmatic entrepreneurial attitude. I wish I could see the imagery more clearly in this first woodblock-printed wallpaper, but obviously it has deteriorated with time. Here is the catalog description from the Cooper Hewitt Museum: perhaps it will help you make out the Lexington Minuteman and his associates: Beside an Indian maiden, representing America, a patriot tramples British laws underfoot and extends the declarations of July 4, 1776, to Britannia, who weeps over a pedestal containing an urn, or a tomb. The whole is contained within a curtained arch. Printed in black, white and gray on a light colorless ground.

Patriotic pattern Minuteman

This paper was produced in America in the last quarter of the eighteenth century, the same time as the textiles below, which are obviously in much better condition: The Apotheosis of Benjamin Franklin and George Washington  is a copperplate-printed toile fabric produced in several colorways in Britain between 1785-1800, right after the first big defeat of the British Empire. I love George Washington’s leopard-driven carriage!

Patriotic pattern Apotheosis Winterthur 2

Patriotic Pattern Apotheosis

Patriotic Pattern Apotheosis Bed Valence Dumbarton

Apotheosis of  Benjamin Franklin and George Washington fabrics in black and red colorways, collections of the Winterthur Museum and the Society of the Cincinnati; bed valence at Dumbarton House/National Society of the Colonial Dames of America.

British pottery manufacturers were also quick to take advantage of the newly-independent emerging American market. Even if you’re just a casual picker, I’m sure that you have run into some of the blue-and-white transferware of the Clews Brothers, James and Ralph, decorated with American scenes and symbols at their factory in Cobridge, England in the 1820s and 1830s. You see it everywhere, in all sorts of forms.

Patriotic Patterns Clews at Skinner Auctions

Patriotic Patterns Clews Platter Skinner

“American” transferware, including a “States Design” platter below,  made by James and Ralph Clews in England,c. 1819-36, Skinner Auctioneers Archives.

And how many gilt mirrors emblazoned with eagles were produced in the Federal era (or reproduced afterwards)? So many, and again, produced in all shapes and sizes in both America and England. Below is a particularly nice eglomise (reverse-painted) example featuring the USS Constitution made in Providence by Peter Grinnell & Son right after the War of 1812. And from the next decade, a beautiful “patriotic overmantle painting” from a Rockport, Massachusetts home. It is tempera on plaster (I’m wondering how they took it off the wall???), and sold for $61,ooo at a Christie’s auction in 2008.

Federal Mirror Eglomise Providence

Patriotic Overmantle painting Rockport MA

This last painting does not really qualify as a commercially-produced product or a pattern, but it is so beautiful I wanted to include it. My last item–a handmade woven wool and linen coverlet with patriotic themes and symbols–dates from the mid-nineteenth century (1851 to be precise), just before patriotism becomes divided and divisive with the coming of the Civil War. Actually, even before 1850 the Abolitionist and Temperance movements produced their own patriotic/promotional objects. This lovely coverlet expresses a more personal patriotism, but also one in keeping with the functions of these other objects:  Americans wanted the symbols and imagery of their new nation on their walls, on their tables, and on their beds.

Patriotic Woven Wool and Linen Coverlet 1851 Skinnersp

Addendum:  Last night on Salem Common: thousands walking, running, praying in support of Boston.

Salem News David Le Staff Photo

Salem News:  David Le/Staff Photo.

2 comments   |  tags: , , , , | posted in Culture, Current Events, Design, History

March 21, 2013

Spring Fancy (Chairs)

By daseger

The combination of the Metropolitan Museum’s current exhibition, Plain or Fancy? Restraint and Exuberance in the Decorative Arts and the onset of Spring (even though it looks very much like winter here) got my thinking about “fancy” chairs. I use this term very liberally, probably too liberally, to refer to any decorated chair with a vaguely  Sheraton and/or Empire profile produced in America in the second quarter of the nineteenth century. I have maybe 7 of these chairs, which represent the full spectrum of fanciness, from basic Hitchcock models with stenciling to hand-painted examples which I think are a bit more special. I have had more, I could buy more–they’re everywhere and I love them. I can’t imagine how many of these chairs were made:  certainly Lambert Hitchcock started the trend with his Riverton (then Hitchcockville), Connecticut factory in the 1820s, but he must have had many imitators because there are so many fancy chairs out there. Several of my fancy chairs  (the ones that are less fancy) have cushions which I had custom-made, and it’s a spring ritual to take the cushions off for the warmer seasons, exposing the rush seats, just as I put slipcovers on some of my upholstered chairs.

The (English) Sheraton inspiration and some of my chairs, the American interpretation: from fancy to plain.

Fancy Chairs Sheraton

Fancy Chair Green2

Fancy Chair music

PicMonkey Collage

Fancy Hitchcock Chairs

You still see fancy chairs in Salem dining rooms today, but the photograph below shows a room from 1916 (not sure in which house; it’s from an article in the long-defunct Mentor magazine), well after the fancy craze was over. These chairs endured and became classic, and their style was revived multiple times in the twentieth century. Back in their heyday, the prolific New England folk artist Joseph H. Davis (active 1832-37) featured very fancy chairs in many of his parlor portraits, like that of Mr. Demeritt below.

Fancy Chairs Mentor 1916

Fancy Chair Joseph H. Davis

Joseph H. Davis, John F. Demeritt, probably Barrington, New Hampshire, 1836, American Folk Art Museum, New York.

Because of a number of factors–the sheer number of chairs that were made, both in the “fancy” period and after, the great variety of chairs, and the range of imperfections on their painted surfaces–you can find these chairs pretty easily in New England, and often for a very good price. I was looking through the sold lots of several auctions at Skinner this month, and found the groups of chairs below: the entire first lot, a set of 6 chairs made in Newburyport in 1825, went for a little over $1000, while the pair of grain-painted and gilt-stenciled chairs went for $615.

987293

987293_view 02_02

Fancy chairs grain painted and gilt stenciled 1825 Skinner 615

Then again, these are rather restrained examples of the “Fancy” style, which encompassed not only furniture but all of the decorative arts in the second quarter of the nineteenth century. One of my very favorite exhibitions at the Peabody Essex Museum here in Salem was American Fancy: Exuberance in the Arts, 1790-1840, on view in 2004 (curated by Virginia antiques dealer Sumpter T. Priddy III, who appears to have made the study and appreciation of “Fancy” his life’s work and who wrote the beautiful companion volume). Talk about exuberance! Chairs and settees were a big part of this exhibition, and it was clear to me that the most fancy chairs were not made in New England but in the mid-Atlantic, in Baltimore to be precise. The “Baltimore Fancy Chair” makes all others pale in comparison (and fetches prices that indicate its enduring appreciation) but I think I prefer my own chairs–less perfect, less brilliant, less valuable, but still fancy.

PicMonkey Collage

More variations on the fancy chair:  a Baltimore chair by the Finlay Brothers, c. 1815-20, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Portrait of Mrs. Edgar Paschall (Martha Eliza Stevens) by unidentified artist, 1823, National Gallery of Art.

13 comments   |  tags: , , , , , , | posted in Design, History, Home

September 25, 2012

Variations on Blue and White

By daseger

I’ve never been a blue person; there is no blue in my house except for my turquoise dining room which I think of as green.  When I went through my transferware phase, I collected red (pink) and white rather than the more attainable blue and white, and in the summer time, when it seems like all of my favorite shelter magazines feature blue and white portfolios, I leaf quickly through.  That said, I have been quite taken by the latest installation of the Peabody Essex Museum”s ongoing “FreePort” exhibitions, through which contemporary artists engage with and respond to the museum’s collections, creating completely new works in the process.  FreePort [No.005]:  Michael Lin takes the traditional blue and white of Chinese export ware and runs with it, as Mr. Lin has emblazoned the armorial and heraldic crests of porcelain produced in China for the European market on the staircase walls and floors of the Museum’s Asian Export galleries.  The effect is modern and baroque at the same time.

And then, as  if these vibrant blue-and white walls and floors were not enough to make us look at plates in a completely different way, Lin also produces a mass of “Mr. Nobodys”, the first Chinese representations of Europeans, with their anonymity enhanced by the massing, and their commercial qualities (we are talking about the Chinese export trade here) enhanced by the fact that you can buy one in the PEM Museum Shop.

For comparison’s sake, another Mr. Nobody from the collection of the Victoria & Albert Museum, London.  This one, however, was produced in England in the later seventeenth century.

The motifs and the figurines are interesting examples of cross-cultural exchange, an important dynamic in world history.  I can’t imagine a better way to (literally) illustrate it.  The Lin installation reminds me of another artistic expression, Blue and White by the Silk Road Ensemble, a multimedia performance that traces the migration of blue-and-white porcelain around the world.

This is a big task, because there are a lot of varieties of Asian-influenced blue and white porcelain and pottery:  delftware, fritware, transferware, just to name a few. Blue and white earthenware is everywhere, crafted in very diverse forms, over many centuries.  Here are two particularly disparate examples:  Iranian rasps in the form of shoes from the eighteenth century, and an image of omnipresent “oriental” planters from Victorian England.  Because I was so inspired by Lin, I tried my hand at my own blue and white Salem fabric design via Spoonflower with limited success:  Samuel McIntire’s sheaths of wheat look a bit too tropical in blue!  Obviously Christopher Dresser’s stenciled ceiling (a nice counterpart for Lin’s walls and floors) is much better.

Fritware and late 19th century songsheet, Victoria & Albert Museum, London; design for a stenciled ceiling, Christopher Dresser, Studies in Design, 1876.

8 comments   |  tags: , , , , | posted in Current Events, Design, History, Salem

August 15, 2012

Dolphin Decoration

By daseger

In my ongoing quest for the perfect mirror, and more mirrors, I came across this Carvers’ Guild mirror embellished with intertwined dolphins, gracing a San Francisco house designed by Benjamin Dhong in the current issue of House Beautiful.  It caught my eye because I have two very similar mirrors in my “mirror files”:  another reproduction one from Mecox Gardens, and a Regency example from the blog Paisley Curtain.  All similar and all beautiful, I think.

As you can see, the “dolphins” embellishing these mirrors are not your typical Flipperesque variety.  The first English explorers named the large fish they observed patrolling the waters off the eastern coast of North America “dolphins”, thus causing centuries of confusion with the better-known marine mammal.  This confusion finally cleared for me just last year, when I wrote a post about the Lady Pepperell House in Kittery Point, Maine, which features dolphin-fish decoration on its exterior, and the commentators cleared it up for me.  I’m not completely certain, but I think the source of this confusion is John White, who accompanied both Richard Grenville and Walter Ralegh on exploratory tours of the New World in the 1580s, charting and illustrating what he saw along the way.  White’s “Duratho” became Dolphin in common Elizabethan English, and endured.  The Dolphin fish later became known as “dorado”, and later still as “mahi-mahi”.

Dolphin fish seem to have been popular decorative motifs in furniture of the English Regency and American Federal and Empire periods, carved in relief or in part on sofas and tables as well as mirrors. There are lots of dolphin feet, as illustrated by the sofa (circa 1820), Lannuier pier table (1815), and Indian tilt-top table (made for the British market after 1825) below.  The American examples generally come from Philadelphia or New York, not New England, where no doubt the almighty cod was still golden.

Mahogany sofa and rosewood pier table by Charles-Honoré Lannuier, Detroit Institute of Arts via ARTstor; Indian tilt-top table, Walters Art Gallery via ARTstor.

7 comments   |  tags: , , , | posted in Design, History

July 9, 2012

Silver Substitute

By daseger

I spent the latter part of the long July Fourth week with family in southern Maine, engaging in some leisurely antiquing along Route One.  Our first stop was one of my long-time favorite shops, R. Jorgensen Antiques in Wells, which is always a lovely place to visit:  amazing furniture, beautiful grounds, friendly owners.  Usually I’m exclusively focused on the big pieces at Jorgensens, particularly tables:  I really can’t imagine a better place to buy an antique dining table.  But while I was gazing longingly at a pedestal table that seats eight but could be magically transformed into a Pembroke table that you could push against the wall, my eye fell on several smaller items: a “silver” tea set that was really pottery in disguise.

I thought I was familiar with lustreware but apparently not.  Many of my pearlware pieces have copper lustre bands, and you see the pink lustreware everywhere, but I had never seen pieces completely dipped in silver or platinum glaze, in such an alchemical and egalitarian way.  Silver for everyone!  This particular tea set is Edwardian, but looking around I found items from the early nineteenth century onwards.  Here are some of my favorites, all dating from the decades immediately following the invention of the glazing process in Staffordshire around 1805:  two lead-glazed earthenware coffeepots with platinum lustre decoration from about 1810-1820, and a two-handed cup, two decorated jugs, and an urn from the same period and region.  I also checked out auction results for similar items over the past few years and found that they are surprising affordable: could there be a new collection in my future?

Silver lustreware from the collection of the Victoria & Albert Museum, London, with the exception of the last two pieces:  decorated jug at Appleby Antiques and urn at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

5 comments   |  tags: , , , , , | posted in Design, History

May 30, 2012

Slippers and Slipware

By daseger

It’s perhaps a bit early–though not too early considering our warm spring– but the lady’s slippers have arrived in my garden.  Late last week I took a walk through the woods and encountered the pink variety (sorry, no camera!) and this weekend out popped my yellow variety ( Cypripedium parviflorum or Cypripedium calceolus, there seems to be an ongoing debate about classification):  they always take my breath away the first time I turn the corner and see them.

I must say I do prefer the yellow variety; the pink ones look a little fleshy close up, with the flower resembling a lung more than a slipper!  Thanks to the journal function of writing a blog, I checked in on my lady’s slippers last year to find that I had seven slippers, while this year I have eleven, including one stem that has two flowers on it!  Words fail to contain my excitement.  Here is a shot from early this morning, after last night’s thunderstorm (during which I had to restrain myself from going outside to put an umbrella over them):  they survived, but are looking a bit put upon.

I was looking around to see how artists have been inspired by the Lady’s Slipper in the past and the present and found that ceramics seem to be the preferred medium for depicting this particular flower, which was once so common, and now relatively rare. My favorite discoveries were a beautiful piece of Staffordshire creamware from the late eighteenth century in the collection of the Victoria & Albert Museum, a Whately jug from the mid-nineteenth century, and a lovely little vase by Michael Stanley Pottery.

3 comments   |  tags: , , , , | posted in Design, Salem

March 9, 2012

The World of Work Boxes

By daseger

I was researching a post on painted “fancy chairs” from the Federal era and after when I got distracted by a great book and its subject matter: Betsy Krieg Salm’s Women’s Painted Furniture, 1790-1830 (University Press of New England, 2010) caught my eye in the library for numerous reasons (it’s a beautiful book, I love painted furniture, the era coincides with Salem’s golden age, so I knew I’d find some good stuff in it), but once I opened it I could not put it down. The result of three decades of research by the author (who is an ornamental artist herself), the book is art history, social history, education history, cultural history, world history all at the same time.

The subtitle, American Schoolgirl Art, is particularly appropriate as this book is about training, expectations, and influences as well as the motifs which decorate the furniture. I had never really considered the distinct genre of “schoolgirl art” and now I’m curious about its place in other eras and cultures. Lots of painted pieces are examined in Salm’s book, but my favorite by far are the work boxes produced by young women from relatively wealthy families, like Salem’s own Mary Derby Prince, the daughter of a Salem ship captain, with connections by blood and marriage to two of Salem’s most commercially aristocratic families, the Derbys and the Ropes. Another Salem box from the same era (and milieu) is that of Hannah Crowninshield, from the collection of the Peabody Essex Museum. Have I ever seen this before?  I don’t think so, but I could have walked right by it. I am familiar with samplers, of course, and the various types of wooden, decorated boxes produced for documents and other materials, but somehow I have never put the two together in the form of a work box, produced by young women as both an example of their work and for their work. Here are some of my favorites from the book:

Work Box by Ann Trask, Rowson Academy, Boston, circa 1810-20. Collection of Old Sturbridge Village.

Lid of Work Box by Hannah Bland, Massachusetts, circa 1810-30. Private Collection.

Detail of Lobstermen from Work Box of Fanny Barber, Gloucester, Massachusetts, 1821. Private Collection.

These boxes are so charming and so reflective of the environments in which these girls lived and worked, as well as the more general cultural influences to which they were exposed.  A little bit more context, for both American schoolgirl art and (transatlantic) work boxes in the first half of the nineteenth century:  a concise yet substantive article about the curriculum and culture at the Misses’ Martin’s School in Portland, Maine, and a few images of professionally-made work boxes from the British Empire. The first box is a particularly expensive example, with leather covering, silk lining, brass fittings, and custom-made sewing and needlework accessories, from the collection of the Victoria & Albert Museum in London.

Work Box, England, circa 1815. Collection of the Victoria & Albert Museum, London.

These last two “cottage” work boxes are both examples of Tunbridge ware, even though they were made in places thousands of miles apart:  southeast England and India. Tunbridge ware is the very intricate type of inlaid woodwork that emerged in the vicinity of Tunbridge Wells, Kent in the eighteenth century, characterized by the creation of mosaic patterns with different colored woods, and sometimes other materials. Tunbridge ware designs influenced American decoration and obviously Asian as well, as the second work box, made of wood veneered with ivory, was made in India around 1790-1800.

Tunbridge ware painted sewing box, early 19th century, Bleasdales Ltd.

Ivory-veneered Work Box, Vishakhapatnam, India, circa 1790-1800. Collection of the Victoria & Albert Museum, London.

12 comments   |  tags: , , , , , , , | posted in History

February 7, 2012

Mirrors for Mantles

By daseger

We have eight fireplaces and six mantles in our house, and because I seem to be inextricably tied to the rule that a mantle must have a mirror over it, I’m always on the hunt for the elusively perfect mirror.  It’s a rather casual hunt, as I have mirrors for all my mantels, just not the right mirrors. Right now, I’m on the lookout for a carved oval gilt mirror from the first half of the nineteenth century, a search that began when I spotted this Salem-made, circa 1820 mirror on ARTstor.

Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts

It’s a bit flamboyant but I love it and wish I could find out more about it; I think it would be a whimsical counter-piece to the more sedate and square mirrors that I already have.  But of course it’s not for sale, and if it were it would probably cost as much as the house.  There’s a somewhat similar oval mirror on 1stdibs from Jorgenson Antiques, but second mortgages must go towards structural necessities rather than decorative accessories!

Here are some other mirrors in the unattainable mirror files, starting with an elaborate oval overmantle mirror in the Cook-Oliver House here in Salem:  it takes a particularly impressive mirror to grace a McIntire-carved mantle.  And then, in no particular order, a Chippendale design for an overmantle mirror dated 1765, another design drawing for a horizontal oval mirror by James Wyatt from the same era (maybe all I want is drawing of a fancy mirror), and a watercolor of a Warwick Castle bedroom from a charming book of plates entitled Historic English Interiors (Hessling, New York, 1920).

HABS photograph by Arthur C. Haskell, 1939. Library of Congress

Victoria & Albert Museum, London

Courtesy Metropolitan Museum of Art

I thought I was looking for an oval mirror until I came across this picture of Ben Bradlee’s and Sally Quinn’s Georgetown dining room:  the embellished rectangular mirror is really lovely, especially over that mantle and against that paper–reproduced from a pattern that was in Mr. Bradlee’s mother’s home in New England.  He descends from the Salem Crowninshields, which might be how and why he was in possession of 12 McIntire chairs.  What you see below are copies; he donated the originals to the White House.

3 comments   |  tags: , , , | posted in History, Salem

December 22, 2011

Juleneg

By daseger

I don’t have a drop of Scandinavian blood in my veins, but I really love the northern European custom of Juleneg, in which a wheat sheaf is attached to a roof gable or adjacent pole or tree at Christmas time.  Elves or fairies are often pictured affixing these “Christmas bundles”– holiday feasts for the birds.  The wheat sheaf is so symbolic; for us it tends to symbolize the harvest, but it can also represent sustenance through the winter and hope fulfilled:  what better Christmas message?  I think we should adopt the Juleneg custom, especially here in Salem, where wheat sheaves have the additional connection to Samuel McIntire, the architect of our beautiful Federal city.

Wheat Sheaves for Christmas:  a Juleneg card from 1911, a McIntire mantle and pin from the PEM shop, the cover of a Federal-era snuffbox, and proofs for chromolithographic Christmas cards from Prang of Boston, 1880s (New York Public Library Digital Gallery).

4 comments   |  tags: , , , , | posted in Culture, Salem

September 27, 2011

The Return of the Dutch Chair

By daseger

The very first antique I bought was a Dutch marquetry chair from the 1820s.  It cost either $425 or $475; I can’t remember exactly, but I was a graduate student in my 20s and it was a lot of money.  If it had been in good condition it probably would have cost a lot more, but one of its legs had been broken and repaired and there were some punky spots here and there. I didn’t know about CONDITION yet, but it hardly mattered to me.  I loved the chair’s curved back and arms and thought it was the most beautiful piece of furniture I had ever seen.  For quite awhile, it played a major role in several living rooms, but gradually it got pushed out, and relegated first to the second floor and then to the third, both because it was rather frail and I kept buying more and more chairs–a major weakness of mine.

The summer before last, the chair was in such an insignificant space that I thought, why don’t I see if someone can make it strong again?  I certainly won’t miss it!  So I called a series of restorers and woodworkers, all of whom said no, too difficult to fix or not worth the effort.  Finally, one nice man said he would give it a shot.  I said, take it away and take your time, and off he went.  I promptly forgot all about my old chair until the middle of this past summer, more than a year after it left my sight.  Mr. Pelletier (Pelletier & Son Furniture Restoration, 52 Howard Street Extension, Salem MA) delivered it to my door, refitted with new internal frame, missing marquetry pieces replaced, and French-polished.


I was very excited to have my chair back but obviously it was time for upholstery.  So off I ran to Zimman’s for my fabric (the best decorating resource anywhere:  80 Market Street, Lynn, MA; zimmans.com).  There’s so much to see there I always get a bit lost, but I finally emerged with a dull gold silk damask fabric that I thought would complement, rather than contrast with, the chair’s woodwork.  A couple of days later, Steve the upholsterer (Up-Right Upholstery, 250 North Street, Danvers, MA; uprightupholstery.com) came to get the chair and it just returned (again).  It’s strong enough to be a living room chair now, but I prefer it in my bedroom, where it has pride of place.

5 comments   |  tags: , , | posted in Home

Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.

Join 1,329 other followers

%d bloggers like this: