Tag Archives: Decorative Arts

April 27, 2026

The Wilton House

By daseger

Virginia was the second leg of our southern road trip: we visited family in Richmond, toured historic gardens, and saw several Lost Cause and revolutionary exhibitions. I am enjoying the regional America 250 interpretations. For example, the Virginia Museum of History and Culture has branded Patrick Henry, Thomas Jefferson, and George Washington, Virginians all of course, as the “Voice, Pen, and Sword” of the Revolution. Now I am a big Patrick Henry fan, but I think we can identify a few other notable voices—perhaps the Adamses of Massachusetts? Different messaging in Philadelphia–which I’ll explore next week. I thought I’d just spotlight a beautiful house today: the Wilton House, also in Richmond, thought its original location was 15 miles outside of the city. It’s a very high-style Georgian mansion built in 1753 for William Randolph III and his family. Threatened by industrial development in 1933 (the year after the bicentennial of Washington’s birthday, cresting an intense Colonial Revival wave) it was purchased by the National Society of Colonial Dames, dismantled, and carefully resurrected on a beautiful site overlooking the James River in Richmond’s west end. Its detaled resurrection, or re-erection, is extremely notable in the history of historic preservation, and I wanted to learn about that as well as see the house. The story, as well as the house, did not disappoint.

I tried, but my amateurish photography can’t really do this house justice: it’s so textured and there was only natural light in many of the rooms. Every single room, downstairs and up, is panelled, and those amazing windowed alcoves seemed to let in different shades of light. The black walnut staircase was astounding! The largest and most public of the downstairs rooms—photos four and five above—was so gorgeous I gasped but I don’t think it’s really captured here. It is set up for General Lafayette, who stayed at the Wilton House just before Yorktown. The interpretation was both architectural (both design and construction) and historical in terms of the Randolph family history and general history, because this was a conspicuous house, visited by many, including George Washington. Ultimately the decline of the Randolph family fortune led to the decline of the house and the derelict status from which the Colonial Dames rescued it. But both the family and its restoration were set in a broad historical and social context, so we see the list of people enslaved by the Randolphs as well as family portraits (in close proximity), and photographs of those who contributed to the restoration of the house and that story too. A dual narrative, encompassing many “smaller stories,” exemplified by a beautiful house.

5 Comments | tags: American Revolution, Decorative Arts, General Lafayette, Historic Houses, Historic Interiors, Historic Preservation, road trips, Virginia | posted in Culture, History, Houses

March 30, 2026

Personal Declarations

By daseger

I would love to hear about Revolutionary exhibitions, programs and events sheduled for your area in this 250th anniversary year: 1776 is certainly alive and well in the Boston area! Since I’m on sabbatical, I’ve been able to attend quite a few happenings, and my favorite collaborative initiative is the Declarations Trail, on which four institutions, the Boston Athenaeum, the Massachusetts Historical Society, the Boston Public Library and Harvard University’s Houghton Library, have put more than a dozen copies of the Declaration of Independence on view, “originally created in different printings for different audiences” along with lots of other contextual objects. I’ve been to the first two exhibitions at the Athenaeum and MHS, and am looking forward to the opening of the last two later this spring.

Looking at, and thinking about, these paper Declarations has got me thinking about their popular and personal reception. I am very mindful of the words of historian J.L. Bell on his great blog Boston 1775: for the first generations of Americans it was a set of words, not an object they ever saw but at the same time, I know that one of the primary functions of print is to make things more permanent, and with tangible permanance comes possession as well as remembrance. Following that trail in my mind brought me to textile Declarations in general and Declaration handkerchiefs in particular–because there seems to have been a market for these words that you could literally put in your pocket. That market did not really develop until the first era of remembrance for the American Revolution—the 1820s, approaching its 50th anniversary with participants dying—but then it really took off. A great book (Threads of History. Americana Recorded on Cloth 1775 to the Present by Smithsonian curator Herbert R. Collins), an archived exhibition at the Museum of the American Revolution, and numerous auction archives introduced me to the copperplate-printed handkerchiefs produced by William Gillespie & Sons in Scotland for the American market beginning in 1821. Produced in blue, black and red colorways, there’s a blue one coming up at auction next week at Eldred’s Auctions, and this spectacular red textile was the banner lot at an important Sotheby’s auction in 2023. A black (more sepia) handkerchief was sold by Swann Auction Galleries in 2023, and the Yale University Art Gallery has a similar one, as well as a centennial quilt from fifty years later sewn around the same: what a perfect object linking two eras of patriotic remembrance.

Textiles seem less ephemeral than paper, so I assume that the Declaration handkerchiefs of the 1820s were in demand as commemorative items, but it’s important to remember that this was also an era that the Declaration was being issued as separate broadside for the first time too–it was evolving from words into an object which could take several forms. The motifs that were featured on these textiles, including the “chain” of states, big Revolutionary moments, and the founding fathers, will reappear again and again. Fifty years later, the Centennial will inspire another wave of patriotic production, but those objects will be more familiar than introductory.

1 Comment | tags: America 250, American Revolution, Auctions, Commemoration, Decorative Arts, Local Events, Patriotism, Revolutionary Commemoration, Textiles | posted in Culture, History

December 1, 2025

Old Salem Settings

By daseger

One of the chapters I wrote for the forthcoming (on January 6!) Salem’s Centuries was on the Colonial Revival, and in it I explored Salem’s experience of that cultural movement as well as Salem’s influence in that cultural movement. I am no art historian, so my purview is very broad, and more focused on popular distillations of “Salem style” than original creations. There were so many references to “Old Salem” in the first three decades of the twentieth century; now when you hear that phrase it is generally referring to Old Salem Museum & Gardens in North Carolina. But in the 1920s and 1930s, you could buy silverware, furniture, rugs, wallpaper, draperies, and ceramics influenced by “Old Salem.” One product that was particularly effective at conjuring up an image of a very romanticized Salem during its commercial heyday was the “Old Salem” line of china manufactured by Copeland starting in Salem’s tricentennial year of 1926 into the 1950s. This was a “Blue Room” issue marketed under Copeland’s original name Spode, for extra transferware sentimental appeal. I think it was first issued in a polychrome pattern, but the blue-and-white version really took off in the U.S., if advertisements and auction lots are any indication.

I’ve included a snip of text from a House Beautiful feature on “colonial” dinnerware from the 1930s in this last image because there’s a lot there/here. First of all, I love this line about how Old Salem the pattern evokes Old Salem the place, a place lost in time, when “the shoe factories had not yet banished the salty flavor of its existence.” Very Colonial Revival. The author wants to emphasize the pattern’s revival and continuity: it was originally produced back in that “salty” past and New Englanders have always bought Spode. I do find the “original production” assertion a bit confusing as the pattern does indeed feature ships, though not exclusively Salem ships, and the settings are clearly European. In fact, Old Salem, which was produced with old copper plate transfers of Italian views, is kind of a composite view in several ways: old world, new world, maritime, floral, all fused together by the magic of transferware for Salem’s 400th and America’s 150th.

Leave a comment | tags: Colonial Revival, Decorative Arts, ephemera, Old Salem, Pottery and Porcelain, Transferware | posted in Culture, Salem

September 15, 2025

A Colonial Revival Dining Room

By daseger

I wrote the chapter on Salem’s Colonial Revival movement in our forthcoming book Salem’s Centuries, an effort that I think was pretty ballsy given that I am neither an American historican or an art/architectural historian. You can be sure that I had both types of experts read it before submission and it has been peer-reviewed several times before publication! I felt confident because I took a biographical and cultural history approach, utilizing the work and lives of Salem exemplars Frank Cousins, Mary Harrod Northend, George Francis Dow, and Caroline Emmerton. They were all so respectful of Salem’s material heritage and more than a bit fearful of change. What we now label the Colonial Revival does seem to have been a movement in Salem, fueled as much (I think!) by nostalgia as by a desire to preserve, and its connections to the fledgling preservation movement in the early twentieth century are what interest me particularly. So while I have a sense of the Colonial Revival as a cultural movement, I am far from any aesthetic understanding, although I think I have made some strides in that direction by working at Historic New England’s Phillips House over these past two summers. The house’s dining room, in particular, a great example of the assertive effort of Salem and Boston architect William Rantoul to “marry” its later-19th century back to its Samuel McIntire front, has become my ideal Colonial Revival room. It all started with the alcove for me. I had seen Rantoul’s colleague and contemporary Arthur Little’s alcove in Caroline Emmerton’s house on Essex Street in person and in renderings (the cyanotype below is from a Little & Browne album in the collections of Historic New England), and it just seemed so Colonial-esque to me, so when I saw some semblance of an alcove in the Phillips’ dining room, it all made sense.

As you can see, Rantoul’s alcove is not nearly as enclosed as that of Little, but the former still carved out that space, removing a staircase for the symmetrical china cabinets and fireplace, delineated from the rest of the room by that strident ceiling moulding. He had modernized the systems for the Phillips after their purchase of the house in 1911: there was no need for that fireplace other than to enhance the “colonial” ambiance, which is also provided by the great Joseph Badger portrait of Phillips relative Thomas Mason (c. 1770-75) with his pet squirrel. I’m not even sure you would call this space an alcove, much less a nook, but it’s the semblence that creates the aura of the past in this large light-filled room.

Frankly this chair annoys me but I understand why it’s there.

Of course, the furnishings set the scene as well, and authors of decorating books from the teens and twenties always advised their readers that they should avoid placing items “of a set” if they were to attain that authentic Colonial look. It was relatively easy for the Phillips’, with their multi-generational wealth and trove of possessions from different places and times, to achieve the desired layered look. Their dining room seems to have attained the general “Colonial feeling” recommended by Helen Koues in her popular manual On Decorating the House (1928), in which the walls and woodwork are light in value, the furniture is mahogany or brown mahogany, silver is shown, and side lights or chandeliers may be in silver with glass prisms, or some fixture Colonial in feeling. Andirons and fireirons are of brass or brass and iron, and the china displayed is of Wedgwood in patterns of the eighteenth century. Of course, Stephen and Anna Phillips were both from old Salem maritime families, so their Wedgwood (and Limoges) is supplemented by a dazzling display of East Asian ceramics.

2 Comments | tags: Architecture, Art, Ceramics, Colonial Revival, Decorative Arts, Historic Interiors, Historic New England, House Museums, Salem Style | posted in Architecture, Culture, Houses, Salem

July 28, 2025

I’m Confused by Pineapples

By daseger

This is one of those “writing it out” posts. It starts out with confusion in the hope that I can work it out, but I may not so it might end in confusion as well. I’m confused about the symbolism of pineapples. Of course everyone knows that pineapples represent “hospitality,” but do they really? What else might they represent? I started out with the question as to whether pineapples are Colonial or Colonial Revival, and it seems that that they are both. I’m also wondering if there are differences in what they represent in the northern US as opposed to the south, and between the US and the UK. My wonder is prompted by recent road trips down south, where I saw a lot of pineapples, as well as an interest in symbolism in general prompted by the recent discussions here in Salem over our official city seal, which some see as stereotypical and rascist and others see as evocative of a proud global maritime heritage. I always find that a historical perspective helps with understanding both images and events; apparently the members of the Task Force charged with examing the seal do not. In any case, there’s always a personal and arbitrary angle: it’s so interesting that different people see very different things in the same image. And that is true of pineapples too: while for the most part they seem to convey a sense of decorative hospitality, they also have associations with exoticism and exclusivity and excess, colonization, plantations (both in the West Indies and Hawaii), coerced labor and ultimately slavery. I am always interested in Salem’s famed “Pineapple House,” a Georgian structure first located on Brown Street and then removed to Brown Street Court which was demolished by 1911 with only its pineapple-pedimented door preserved, first in the Essex Institute and now in the American galleries at the Peabody Essex Museum. I’ve written about it before, but I know more now: its pineapple was not a local creation but rather a British import and its importer, Captain Thomas Poynton, became one of Salem first Loyalistist refugees, leaving his house (and his wife!) for England in 1775. That conspicuous (always gilded by all accounts) pineapple might have had Tory associations in Revolutionary Salem, but nevertheless it became the inspiration for one of Salem’s most important Tercentenary expressions, the band stand on Salem Common erected in 1926.

There are pineapple motifs on New England furniture and wallpapers from the 18th century through the mid-twentieth, but in terms of conspicuous architectural detail I think the best examples are the Hunter House in Newport, RI and the Wentworth-Gardner House in Portsmouth, NH (after Salem’s Pineapple House, of course). The Hunter House was also owned by a prominent Loyalist, and a recent article on its new Orientation Gallery describes its current interpretation as a “paradigm shift”: Here visitors can examine a historic photograph of the house’s pineapple pediment alongside a silver coffee pot and a pair of covered baskets adorned with pineapple finials. The display discusses the tropical fruit as a product of colonization and slavery as well as a symbol of wealth and hospitality in colonial Newport. For the Preservation Society, which long ago adopted the pineapple as part of its logo, this analysis represents a paradigm shift. It’s been a few years since I’ve been on a tour, but I don’t think this kind of deep dive is offered up at the Wentworth Gardner House in Portsmouth, which was restored by none other than Colonial Revival evangelist and entrepreneur Wallace Nutting in 1916-18. And there’s no need, as Nutting added the pedimented pineapple, and the entire entrance surround to the house. This very Colonial Revival pineapple anticipated the ever-present fruit emblems at another prominent Colonial-esque institution: Colonial Williamsburg.

And down south, it’s the same thing: there are eighteenth-century pineapples and then there is a twentieth-century pineapple revival. Virginia’s oldest plantation, Shirley, has a very prominent three-foot-tall pineapple right at the apex of the roof of its main house, which was built around the same time as the Poynton House in Salem and the Hunter House in Newport. Installing a pineapple on the pinnacle of one’s roof must have been a James River Plantation thing, as Brandon Plantation has one as well. Another interesting transatlantic pineapple connection relates to the last Colonial Governor of Virginia, John Murray, the fourth Earl of Dunmore, who commissioned a stone-carved pineapple summerhouse for his Scottish estate in 1761, likely the most famous pineapple construction in the world. The pineapple is very prominent in Charleston, of course, with the pineapple gateposts (which I think were supposed to be pinecones?) of the Simmons-Edwards House dating from around 1816 and the famous pineapple fountain dating from 1990.

Shirley and Brandon Plantations in Virginia; The Dunmore Pineapple, Stirlingshire, Scotland via the National Trust for Scotland; Gate at the Simmons-Edwards House at 14 Legare Street, Charleston, built 1816, from the lovely site Glimpses of Charleston; some pineapple images from one of my favorite books, Charleston Style, by Susan Sully with photographs by John Blais.

Pineapples on the gatepost (and I suppose by extension the very popular pineapple doorknocker) are said to be visual “traditions” based on the practice of ship captains returning from exotic realms displaying pineapples on their properties to indicate that they were home, and ready to receive visitors. This story is repeated again and again and again, but I don’t seem to find any references to it before the early twentieth century. I think it’s more Colonial Revival romance. Pineapple stories just keep getting repeated with very little insight, analysis or research, at least over here. With the exception of the Newport Preservation and a Smithsonian blog post about the “prickly” history of the pineapple, these storied fruits (and their visualizations) don’t have much cultural depth over here in the US: and if they are in fact emblems I think they should have more. But in the UK, wow! Here’s a great History Workshop piece with all sorts of associations, and very recently, a “sinister history of the pineapple” student project at the University of Southampton in collaboration with Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew was featured in Dezeen. My research for this post exposed me to yet another pineapple association: apparently an upside-down pineapple sign on a door means means there are swingers within! That’s a long way from friendly sea captains, and obviously there’s much more to pineapples than meets the eye (but I’m still confused).

Dezeen Magazine, July 26, 2025: A “Sign of Status” by Jas Jones, who concludes “the pineapple is no innocent fruit.”

5 Comments | tags: Architecture, Charleston, Decorative Arts, Decorative motifs, Emblems, Newport, Pineapples, Portsmouth, Public Art, public history, Salem Houses, Salem Tercentenary, Scotland, Virginia | posted in Architecture, Art, Culture

June 16, 2025

Patriot Properties

By daseger

An eventful weekend—one of several coming up this summer! I’m going to focus on one event out of several I participated in—a house tour of Patriots’ homes in Marblehead—simply because it yielded the best pictures. Having done this a couple of times myself, I am always grateful to homeowners who open up their houses to the public. As I am focusing on Marblehead, right next door to Salem, today, I have to admit that I’m feeling a bit envious of our neighbor for three essential reasons these days. First of all, it seems to have a very engaged electorate which has much more power than we do in Salem. I had an appointment there last week which happened to fall on local election day, and saw tons of people and signs out and about. Marblehead residents elect their board and commission members and city clerk, while in Salem we only elect a Mayor and city councillors, and the former appoints all the commissioners with the rubber stamp of the latter. There are often uncontested elections in Salem and the voter turnout is very low: 28% in the last mayoral election I believe. Marblehead is a town so they have town meetings! I feel quite disenfranchised by comparison. The second reason I envy Marblehead is its Revolutionary fort, Fort Sewall, which is perfectly preserved and well-maintained in contrast to Fort Pickering, Salem’s major historic fort, which has been left to rot and ruin by the City of Salem. This is, I believe, another example of civic engagement or the lack thereof. The third reason I envy Marblehead, pretty much every single day, is that it has a professional historical society, unlike Salem. The Marblehead Museum was established as the Marblehead Historical Society in 1898, and it continues its mission “to preserve, protect, and promote Marblehead’s past as a means of enriching the present” today. Salem has no such institution; it failed to develop one as the Essex Institute served that role for much of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, before its assimilation into the Peabody Essex Museum. The Marblehead Museum combines its stewardship roles (of both Marblehead’s historic record and its three properties) in conjuction with a very active calendar of interpretive events, including this weekend’s house tour, which couldn’t have been more timely.

The tour of five houses was self-guided, and so the first house for myself and my friend Liz was the Robert Hooper House on Washington Street, a 1769 reconstruction of an earlier home which I always thought was a Federal house. It has recently been restored so we were both eager to get in, and once inside you could immediately tell it was pre-Revolutionary even with its vibrant decoration. The carriage house was open too, and the views down to its terraced garden were spectacular, even on a rainy day. At first, I was a bit confused as to why this house was on a tour of homes associated with Patriots as I had my Marblehead Robert Hoopers mixed up: the owner of this house was NOT the famouse Loyalist Robert “King” Hooper, whose house is located just across the way, but rather another Robert Hooper. It was also confusing to read that George Washington visited this house during his 1789 visit to Marblehead: I don’t think this is the case as he is recorded as having been greeted at the Lee Mansion just down the street. But Robert “NO KING” Hooper’s son, also named Robert Hooper, was married to a daughter of Marblehead’s most illustrious Revolutionary general, John Glover, and as they inherited the house after his father’s death in 1814 that’s quite enough of a patriot connection for me.

Then we walked over to Franklin Street and the Devereux House, a very classical Georgian house built in 1764 by Marblehead merchant Joseph Homan. Persons enslaved by him likely lived here before Homan sold the property to Eldridge Gerry of “Gerrymandering” fame. Gerry gifted the house to his sister Elizabeth, the wife of Selectman Burrill Devereux who welcomed President Washington to town in 1789. A lovely house, well-maintained over the years and now the home of another Patriot, with whom we discussed the Army’s (rather than the President’s) big birthday.

The most famous Marblehead Patriot (who was born in Salem) is undoubtedly General John Glover, who ferried General Washington and his troops across the Delaware on Christmas night 1776 in advance of their big victory at Trenton. There is a Glover Square named after him, and in the midst of this square is the house most closely associated with him. Like the Devereux House, it’s on the National Register, and features yet another impressive Georgian entrance hall.

On our way back to our final stop, the Jeremiah Lee Mansion, we realized we had missed a house, which is of course a capital crime on any house tour. So we made a little detour to see the Martin-Hulen-Lemaster House on Washington Street. Its generous owner allowed us to see the entire 1755 house, and you could really appreciate the space created by its gambrel roof on the third floor. Marblehead ship captain Elias Hulen, Jr., whose father served on the Seacoast Guards and as a privateer during the Revolution, owned and occupied this house after its orginal owners departed for Maine in the 1770s.

We finished up the tour at the 1768 Jeremiah Lee Mansion, a museum property which I’ve toured before and posted about here. It’s an amazing edifice, with interiors impressive in both detail and scale. Only the first floor was open for the tour so I took some photos of decorative details that I didn’t think I captured in my earlier post, and looked out the tall windows at the archeaological and structural evidence of the Marblehead Museum’s ambitious ongoing project, a $1.4 million renovation of Lee’s Brick Kitchen & Slave Quarters next door. When completed, this project will expand the Museum’s archival, office, and exhibition space in addition to revealing and interpreting spaces of enslavement and labor, a logical extension of the Museum’s continuous efforts to identify and document the lives of African American and Indigenous peoples in Marblehead’s history.

A few photos of the Jeremiah Lee Mansion interiors and the Brick Kitchen/Slave Quarters project behind and adjacent to the Mansion. The only king I was interested in this past weekend was the King of Prussia, as I was just fascinated by this plate!

One more object of Marblehead envy popped up while I was looking at the Marblehead Museum’s website: the town retains reference to the original Pawtucket Tribe of our region in its land acknowledgement statement, while Salem’s excludes any reference to these native peoples in favor of the Massachusetts Tribe. I wish we could acknowledge the Pawtucket.

4 Comments | tags: American Revolution, Decorative Arts, Georgian Architecture, Historic Interiors, House Tours, Local Events, Marblehead, Marblehead Museum, public history, Revolution 250, Revolutionary Commemoration | posted in Architecture, History

August 5, 2024

The Bowman House

By daseger

We were vacationing in midcoast Maine last week so I took the opportunity to visit Historic New England’s newest property, the Bowman House, with a few friends. We also saw the nearby Pownalborough Court House, which is one of the most extraordinary Colonial buildings I have ever encountered. The Bowman House is in Dresden, right on what was a very busy Kennebec River short at the time of its construction in the mid-eighteenth century. Now it sits amongst tranquil rolling lawn: this photograph is of the rear, of course; the front entrance looks upon the River.

The house is a very high-style Georgian construction, the type you see built in shipbuilding centers. It has a very charming air about it, partially provided by the architecture, but also by the restoration and decoration, which was the work of Bill Waters, who worked and lived in the house for decades. He died in 2016, after having donated the house to Historic New England with the qualification of lifetime tenure. So even though this house was built in 1762 for Joshua Bowman, a judge with Hancock connections, it really felt like Bill Water’s 21st century Georgian house: his personality shined through both his preservation efforts and his possessions. Since I’ve been working for Historic New England myself this summer, I’ve been thinking about the differences between the work of a tour guide and a professor, and one major one is that the work of the former is a lot more personal: you’re talking to and with smaller groups about more intimate stories rather than trends, causes and consequences. Historic New England’s interpretion focuses on the people who lived in its houses as much as their architectural history, and “Bill’s house” is a great example. (Although our guide did introduce us to local master builder Gershom Flagg, who built both the Bowman House and the Pownalborough Courthouses, and now I am obsessed!) Bill Waters came to the house through the Burrage sisters, Mildred and Madeleine, notable artists and world travelers who moved to Wiscasset in 1962 and became interested in the region’s historic architecture. In 1961 they purchased the Bowman House, and sold it to Waters several years later, and he and his life partner Cyrus Pinkham began their life’s (house) work.

Bill Waters with Bowman descendant Florence Bixby and the Burrage Sisters in 1968 (Maine Historical Society), and more recently.

So let’s go into the house, shall we? You enter through a single-story sun room which was likely a nineteenth-century addition (the house served as the office for an ice-supply business in the later 19th century) and then into the kitchen and a series of first-floor parlors and dining room adjoining a spacious central hallway—wonderful reproduction wallpapers throughout, including the pillar-and-arch paper that I think is also in Hamilton House? Throughout his tenure, Waters worked to bring as many period-appropriate and/or Bowen furnishings into the house, and everything seems perfect and very colorful, but also very, very livable.

There are several spaces in which he seems like he just stepped away…….like the bar (above) and lots of whimsy, like the feathers on his canopy bed (below). Artful assembly throughout, and very special mirrors!

We exited through the sunroom, a very comfortable space which reveals Waters’ appreciation of trade signs (as well as his southern roots, represented by a small image of General Robert E. Lee) and then drove down the road to the Courthouse: wow! Photographs don’t quite represent the scale of this 1761 building.

7 Comments | tags: Bowen House, Decorative Arts, Georgian Architecture, Historic Interiors, Historic Interpretation, Historic New England, Kennebec River, Maine, Mirrors, road trips | posted in Culture

January 22, 2024

Salem 1799

By daseger

I always tell my students forget dates, you can always look them up, dates are a terrible way to learn history, but sometimes dates just stand out: 1348, 1517, 1776, 1789, 1914. The other day I was engaged in some endnote-editing and somehow, the date 1799 just started jumping out at me: it suddently seemed like the most important date in Salem’s history! Why? A lot of building mostly: of two of the most spectacular Derby houses and Salem’s first federal frigate, the Essex. But there were other notable things that happened in that year too: the foundation of the East India Marine Society for one, and the renaming of Salem’s long-ignored seventeenth-century fortification, Fort Pickering, for another. 1799 was a big year for Salem, then the eighth largest “city” in the United States with a population of over 9000. Its commercial vitality was already well-established, but it aquired a new civic reputation with the construction-by-subscription of the Frigate Essex for the federal government. The most wonderful book sheds light on the whole commission/subscription/construction process: Philip Chadwick Foster Smith’s The frigate Essex papers : building the Salem frigate, 1798-1799 (1974): I wouldn’t presume to add to it! I will, however, include a couple of its maps. Salem had terrible flooding last weekend and I think we need to remember that we live in an infilled-city, and that a river runs through it.

The US Frigate Essex, built in Salem by Salem residents.

Joseph Howard, watercolor of the Essex, after 1799, Peabody Essex Museum.

Maps from Philip Chadwick Foster Smith’s The Frigate Essex Papers.

Not one but TWO Derby houses built in 1799, with Bulfinch & McIntire designs.

The Ezekiel Hersey Derby House and the Elias Hasket Derby Mansion, one which existed long enough to be “denatured” into a commercial building and the other very short-lived, as its commissioner, the wealthy merchant Elias Hasket Derby, died in the same year that it was built: 1799. Think about the Salem in which these two structures were raised: talk about McMansions! These were conspicuous structures: Chestnut Street was at least five years into the future.

These were houses of a son and father of Salem’s first family. I’m not sure how long Ezekiel, the fifth child of Elias Hasket Derby, lived in his elegant house, one of just a few in Salem to be designed by Charles Bulfinch (with interior architectural details by Samuel McIntire). He was more focused on agricultural pursuits and the development of south Salem, where he had a sprawling farm. His town house stood long enough to be stripped, as happened to so many notable houses, and architectural historian Fiske Kimball established a Derby Room at the Philadelphia Museum of Art with its architectural features.

Plans and photos of the Ezekiel Hersey Derby House, Phillips Library, Peabody Essex Museum; the Derby Room at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

Elias’s mansion did not stand long enough to be “denatured” (which certainly would have happened in its central location, maybe its short life was a blessing) or photographed, but there are sketches and plans in the PEM’s Phillips Library. It gave way to the present-day Derby Square.

Captain Devereux opens up trade with Japan!

It is decidedly NOT true that Commodore Perry opened up trade with Japan in 1853; rather, Captain John Devereux of Salem and the Boston ship Franklin did so in 1799. The Dutch had had a monopoly on western trade with Japan since the early 17th century, primarily because they did not proselytize like their European counterparts during the Reformation. Two centuries later, they licensed American ships to go to their trading post on Deshima Island just off the port of Nagasaki, including the Franklin in 1799 and the Salem ship Margaret in 1801. Devereux brought Japanese goods back to Salem, and so did the captain of the Margaret, Samuel Derby. The former’s account book in the Phillips Library lists “128 raincoats” purchased there, as well as several items of “lacked” (lacquered) furniture: the Peabody Essex Museum has a Hepplewhite-style knife box, several card and tip-top tables, and a large server/oval waiter in its collection from this cargo, the focus of an article in the July, 1954 Magazine Antiques below. Of course, the Reverend Bentley ran right over to see Captain Devereux’s hall at his house on the Common as soon as he returned, as recorded in his famous Diary.

The Foundation of the East India Marine Society!

The Peabody Essex Museum’s foundation date of 1799 and claim to be the oldest (maritime) museum in the United States is based on the establishment of the East India Marine Society in that year. I love the description of the society included in the American Neptune of 1944, in an article marking the completion of the restoration of the the Society’s East India Marine Hall: In the autumn of 1799 a group of thirty Salem shipmasters met to found a society so exclusive that only those who had sailed around Cape Horn or the Cape of Good Hope as masters or supercargos would be eligible for membership. As the first New England vessel had reached China only thirteen years before, this requirement made the society comparable, for its time, to a modern aviation club, for which only pilots who had successfully crossed the Atlantic or Pacific could qualify. Its members were equipped with notebooks so they might advance navigational and geographical knowledge, and like Captain Devereux, they brought home things to embellish their Society’s “cabinet”. There are quite a few old histories of the Society (like the 1920 text below) which reprint the foundation documents and highlight all sorts of little details, but there’s also George Schwartz’s recent history, Collecting the Globe, which presents a more comprehensive context for its foundation year, 1799.

3 Comments | tags: Architecture, books, Charles Bulfinch, Decorative Arts, Derby Family, East India Marine Society, Fort Pickering, Japan, Magazines, Peabody Essex Museum, Salem History, Salem Ships, Samuel McIntire, Winter Island | posted in Culture

December 22, 2023

Holiday Tables

By daseger

If I’m hosting for Christmas or any other holiday, I spend more time thinking about the table than the menu: much more time. I love setting the table, and once I attain my “vision” we’re all relegated to eating in the kitchen, no matter how many days before the big meal. Here it is, December 22, and I am hosting Christmas dinner and the table is not set! I just finished my grading, however, so I’ll get it together. I have a different animal theme every year for Christmas decorating and some animals are easier than others. Obviously deer are super easy, and I’ve also done bears, foxes, sheep, swans, pheasants, mice and hedgehogs—and more. This year, I chose lions, and they have been challenging! But I do have these great lion placemats which are everything. I’m not quite ready, however, so here’s a succession of holiday tables from both sides of the Atlantic. First we have some Scottish tables from my trip last month, and then a succession of tables from Strawbery Banke in Portsmouth, NH: every year they have a Candlelight Stroll among and within their historic houses, featuring a sweeping and colorful view of holidays past.

Scotland: first up are parlor, dining room, and kitchen tables in the Georgian House in Edinburgh’s New Town, owned and operated by the National Trust for Scotland, then a Georgian “everything” room in another National Trust House, Gladstone’s Land. You’re looking at a table, but a lot more is going on in this room–it reminded by of another Georgian room, just below, in the Concord Museum, which I just visited last week. Back in Edinburgh, nothing is more festive than a pub table, and the city is in the midst of major gin craze. The Jolly Botanist is a great gin bar that we really enjoyed.

Back Home (well in Portsmouuth): Strawbery Banke is a museum “neighborhood” of historic houses, some of which were located in the Puddle Dock area of Portsmouth, others which were moved there when the museum was founded in the 1960s. It’s always been a part of my life, as I grew up across the river in southern Maine. The annual Candlelight Stroll features decorated houses with reenactors, representing different periods and stratas of society. The opulent Goodwin Mansion, first up below, was built in 1811, but it is interpreted as an 1870s house. Below its dining room is that of the Chase House, a Georgian structure that is interpreted c. 1818, followed by that of the Rider-Wood House (1830s), the Shapiro House (1919) and the time-capsule 1950s kitchen of the Pridham House.

My table is not set yet but here are the lions, ready to go! Best wishes for a restorative and merry Christmas.

2 Comments | tags: Animals, Christmas, Christmas Decorations, Decorative Arts, Historic Houses, Historic Interiors, holidays, National Trust for Scotland, Strawbery Banke, Tablescapes, United Kingdom | posted in Culture, History, Houses

February 14, 2023

Adorning Hearts

By daseger

Something light and bright, fluffy and joyful and merely decorative for Valentine’s Day: I wanted to use the occasion to reaquaint myself with some decorative arts databases. Between my last book project and the two that I’m working on now, and teaching, and being frequently frustrated with Salem heritage and preservation issues (as you know all too well here) I don’t have much time for wandering about in digital image archives. But I gave myself permission to do so this weekend, and here are the results! If you have a universal symbol like ♥♥♥ as your keyword, you’re going to get thousands of results: I limited mine to textiles, and then just chose my favorites by purely aesthetic standards. Whether these fabrics were created for the table, or the wall, or a person, they are more about adornement than adoration.

Above: Furnishing Fabrics from Alsace, c. 1840, Metropolitan Museum of Art, A.C. Pugin, 1851, Victoria & Albert Museum, France, later 19th century, The Design Library, C.F.A. Voysey (who clearly loved hearts!), 1900-1929, Victoria & Albert Museum, and a heart handkerchief by Sylvia Chambers, 1940s, Glasgow School of Art Archives. Below: “Hearts & Flowers” from Folly Cove designer Peggy Hamilton, 1955, Cape Ann Museum.