New furniture constituted only part of the output of the typical furniture craftsman in the late colonial and federal periods. Another mainstay of business and the focus of this article and its sequel was the repair of furniture already in use. Forming the basis of this analytical study is a sizable body of material describing period repair work, as gleaned from a database of more than 250 original documents, varying from craftsmen's accounts to clients' business records. The geographic range of the documents is broad, extending from Maine to Georgia, with major emphasis centering on Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York, and Pennsylvania. Eighty-three percent of the documentation dates between the Revolution and the mid-nineteenth century. Based on document date and origin, the material falls into three arbitrary groups, reflecting varying economies. Primary urban locations represent 46 percent of the sample; rural and semirural areas account for another 35 percent; and secondary urban locations make up the remaining 19 percent of the total. Craftsmen working in secondary urban locations often were subject to the cross-economic influences of the rural region surrounding them and the trading economy at their elbows.
As many historians have learned, the study and interpretation of period documents is rarely straightforward. Entries in craftsmen's accounts typically are brief and bereft of descriptive embellishment. More information is left unrecorded than noted, and ambiguities are common. Multiple terms often apply to the same task or object. In this study, for instance, the words "mend," "repair," and "fix" appear to have had the same meaning, and craftsmen often used them interchangeably, even in a single document. If nuances of meaning actually existed, they are subtle.
For clarity and ease of discussion, the large body of information documenting furniture repairs and alterations consulted for this study has been divided into seven main categories and further subdivided, as appropriate. Seating furniture makes up the largest group, followed by tables and case furniture. More modest in number are references to bedsteads, children's furniture, and looking glasses, in that order. Somewhat of a surprise is the notable body of material dealing with dozens of miscellaneous household and personal items that includes objects as diverse as teapot handles and musical instruments.
To better manage the length and complexity of this study, the text will be presented in two parts. Complementing the relatively simple frames of the seating furniture, bedsteads, and tables that form part 1 will be the complex cases of the desks, chests, and cupboards forming part 2 (forthcoming 2008), augmented by looking glasses and the wealth of miscellaneous items associated with everyday life two hundred and more years ago.
Chairs
Craftsmen's records of repairs made to chairs and other furniture forms are primarily general in nature, often identifying neither the specific details of the work undertaken nor the particular style of the furniture. Insights may be gleaned, however, from the small number of account entries that contain more than basic descriptive information and by making cost comparisons. The majority of recorded chair repairs focuses on vernacular seating. In describing this activity, craftsmen employed the term "mend" three times as often as "repair." Other terms include "fix" and "work on" or "work at" a specific object or furniture group. In dealing with damaged vernacular chairs, craftsmen appear to have replaced parts more commonly than they repaired them.
The front runner in chair repairs was seat "bottoming," a process also known as "matting" and "seating." Until the introduction of the plank-seat Windsor chair in the mid-eighteenth century, most chairs had seats of woven plant material. The common choice was "rush," also called "flag," a plant (genus Juncus) with pith-filled stems that grows in marshes or near water. Craftsmen made frequent note in their accounts of the acquisition of "bunches" or "bundles" of flags.
Amos Denison Allen of South Windham, Connecticut, bottomed "6 fidlebackd Chairs" for a customer in 1798 at a charge of 1s. 6d. apiece. In the new decimal-based currency of the nation, this was equivalent to 25¢ per chair. Craftsmen working in prosperous regions of the country in the 1790s could expect to earn at least 6s. ($1.00) a day at their trade, suggesting that one-quarter of a day was required to replace each chair seat in Allen's order. John and Samuel Durand Jr., father and son, also made and repaired fiddle-back chairs along the Connecticut coast at Milford in the late eighteenth century (fig. 1).[1]
With few exceptions, bottoming a chair with rush required no further explanation in craftsmen's accounts. When Daniel and Samuel Proud of Providence, Rhode Island, wove a seat bottom for 34¢ in 1818, they also repaired the chair with a new "side list." A list is a seat framing member, one of four, concealed by the rush (see fig. 1). On another occasion the Proud brothers were engaged to provide rushwork of a quality above standard weaving. The tightly twisted "fine" seat they wove cost the customer 50¢. Some years earlier Thomas Moody supplied Captain Edmund Kimball of Newburyport, Massachusetts, with fine rush bottoms for two chairs, along with a "Coars" bottom for another seat. "Superior work" was another term for a fine seat. John Proud of Providence charged a substantial 66¢ for this work in 1824, although the seat may have been of large size.[2]
When Elizur Barnes, a cabinetmaker of Middletown, Connecticut, undertook to refurbish eight vernacular chairs for Arthur Magill in 1822, the painted and decorated fancy chair had achieved prominence. Its rush bottom was no less vulnerable to wear and tear, however, than those of its fiddle-back, slat-back, and banister-back predecessors. To address this problem, householders could elect to have their woven chair seats coated with varnish or paint, which, as described by Thomas Sheraton in his Cabinet Dictionary (1803), "preserves the rushes, and hardens them." Magill chose yellow paint for his chair seats and further engaged Barnes to paint and varnish the chairs' wooden surfaces.[3]
Aside from rush, consumers could choose from several other seating materials, although none was substantially more popular than any other. At Providence, William Barker described a cheaper substitute for rush when he billed a customer 1s. 4d. for a "Straw matt," the price being 2d. less than his rush bottoms. Splint was another option. Harvested from the inner bark of trees, frequently the hickory tree, the material also was used in basketwork. Stephen Whipple, who worked in the Boston area in 1805, recorded a job of "bottoming 3 chairs, 2 of them with bark & the other with flags." Chairmaker Simon Perkins of Weare, New Hampshire, was more specific when he noted that he had bottomed chairs with "elm bark." The basketweave pattern of splint was described by Solomon Fussell, a chairmaker active at Philadelphia in the 1740s, when he recorded matting three chairs with "Checkt bottoms." One drawback of splint seats was their tendency to damage the clothing of the sitter. A rarity in craftsmen's accounts is the activity recorded by Thomas Boynton at Windsor, Vermont, in 1816: "Board bottoming 5 chairs" at 9d. apiece, or 63¢ for the lot. These were not the planks used in Windsor chair seats, although on occasion householders who furnished with Windsors might encounter a problem, as suggested by an entry in the accounts of Silas Cheney of Litchfield, Connecticut. In October 1820 Cheney noted that before he could repaint eight chairs he was, of necessity, employed in "giting out nails out of 8 Chairs Chair Seat."[4]
Rockers were the second most common repair or addition to vernacular seating. Even a small sampling of craftsmen's records reveals hundreds of references. Rocking chairs, sometimes called "easy chairs," were in limited use from the second to the fourth quarters of the eighteenth century. After craftsmen introduced rockers to the Windsor in the 1790s, interest began to grow. By the late 1820s the rocking chair had become a household fixture.[5]
Although many chairs entered the market as rockers, many more were converted to that form from any of a variety of vernacular chairs common to most households. In this respect two direct references to replacement rockers on rocking chairs are unusual. Allen Holcomb of New Lisbon, New York, noted that he put "a new Rocker on a rocking chair" in July 1825, followed three years later by Chapman Lee of Charlton, Massachusetts, who recorded a job of "putting Rockers on [a] Rocking Chair." Still other craftsmen recorded altering or repairing rockers already in place. Chairs chosen by householders for conversion to rockers were at times in need of repair. A replacement foot and stretchers refurbished a chair in 1819 to which George Landon of Erie, Pennsylvania, added rockers. Arms also were vulnerable to damage from sitters using them to support too much weight as they sat or rose from chairs. When Daniel Ford of Plainfield, Massachusetts, had new arms made for a chair in 1807, he also directed Samuel Davison to add rockers and paint the chair. Some insights into the types of chairs converted from stationary to rocking form appear in the accounts of True Currier of Deerfield, New Hampshire. In 1824 he recorded that he had made "rockers and slats for chairs." A year later the same customer requested the craftsman to make "a bow & rockers" for a Windsor chair.[6]
On occasion, craftsmen modified chair feet for purposes other than installing rockers. Titus Preston of Wallingford, Connecticut, completed a job for a customer in 1805 by "puting 2 rounds to a chair & sawing it lower." At Albany, New York, in the same year James Chestney accommodated Peter E. Elmendorf by "cutting off and bottoming 2 Cottage chairs." Chestney then painted the chairs and ornamented the surfaces with fine lines, or "penciling."[7]
As stated previously, furniture makers appear to have replaced damaged parts in vernacular chairs more often than they repaired them. Records identify replacement work in a range of chair styles: fiddle backs; banister backs; Windsors, also known as dining chairs; kitchen, or slat-backs; and fancy chairs, some in the Grecian style. The terms "old" and "old fashioned" occur with regularity. Rounds, or stretchers, suffered the greatest number of mishaps because these low braces were a convenient place for the sitter to park his feet. Vulnerable to a lesser degree were arms, or "elbows," legs, also called "feet," crest pieces, and even entire backs. Craftsmen had less call for individual slats, banisters, and "sticks," or spindles. Entries for repairs to great chairs, or armchairs, occur with some regularity, and the Proud family of Providence mended their share. A typical account notation, made in 1782, reads: "To 1 Grate Chair Bottoming, To 1 Top and 4 Banester."[8]
With the introduction of the fancy chair at the close of the eighteenth century, seat casings, or moldings, introduced new concerns for conscientious householders (fig. 2). These thin strips of shaped wood nailed to four sides of a rush seat frame were vulnerable to cracking, chipping, and falling off. When a rush seat was replaced, casings were removed then reattached to the new seat, providing another opportunity for these delicate parts to be damaged. David Alling bought chair moldings in quantity from suppliers in and around Newark, New Jersey, where he had an extensive chair business for more than fifty years, beginning circa 1800. When chairs came into the shop for repair, appropriate replacement parts likely were at hand. A typical repair, made in 1836, called for matting and molding a rocking chair and painting the new seat "2 coats," all at a cost of 62¢. Several years later Alling recorded a somewhat extreme repair: "To mending 1 badly broke grecian chair."[9]
Painting ranked with bottoming as a service most requested by householders. As a surface coating, paint was suitable for any type of vernacular chair in the market in the late colonial and federal periods. Samuel J. Tuck, proprietor of a Windsor and fancy chair manufactory at Boston, knew the public mind when he advertised in 1802: "Chairs repaired and painted, to look as good as new."[10]
Little detail accompanies craftsmen's records of repainting chairs. Colors are only occasionally identified. Green and black appear to have been the common choices; other named selections include blue and white. Titus Preston of Wallingford, Connecticut, combined green and black in 1801 when painting a large set of fourteen chairs, probably Windsors, introducing a striking contrast between the seat and the other surfaces. The mahogany-color chairs John Sager painted for a customer in 1808 at Bordentown, New Jersey, likely were of solid color, as grain painting was not introduced to seating furniture until almost a decade later. By the time that David Alling of Newark, New Jersey, repainted a sewing chair in 1836 to resemble curled maple, "imitation" finishes had swept the market.[11]
Craftsmen rarely noted how many new coats of paint they applied to chair surfaces. One coat appears to have been the norm unless special circumstances or the customer dictated otherwise. Silas Cheney recorded instances of painting chairs with two coats and four coats. His work at "Painting 6 chairs twise" for Bettey Shepard at Litchfield, Connecticut, in 1817 cost his customer $2.00, the equivalent of two days' pay for many workmen. Cheney also made note on occasion of scraping, or "Smoothing Out," chair seats before repainting. When work had been completed at a shop, it was customary for a customer to call for his furniture. In a few rare instances craftsmen noted otherwise. Silas Cheney, for example, both "fetched" and carried to a customer eight chairs he painted and ornamented in 1815, charging 33¢ for the service. When James Gere of Groton, Connecticut, mended, painted, and ornamented six Windsor chairs for a customer in 1831, he noted a charge for "Carting home the same" to Preston, a distance of more than fifteen miles.[12]
By the early nineteenth century chairs that received a fresh coat of paint in a woodworker's shop often were ornamented. Descriptions usually end there, however, and the nature of most ornamental work is unknown. A typical record is that of Elizur Barnes, who mended, painted, and ornamented a large rocking chair for 38¢ in 1823 at his shop in Middletown, Connecticut, but who gave no further details. More specific are references to striping, penciling, and tipping. Striping identifies decoration of fine to broad lines used to accent and define chair parts. Penciling and tipping refer specifically to fine lines executed with a small camel's-hair brush known as a "pencil" (fig. 2). Painting and decorating both new and old chairs were often undertaken at David Alling's Newark, New Jersey, manufactory. In 1839 a customer deposited "8 ballback Bamboo," or fancy, chairs, which Alling mended, matted, molded, painted, and striped. The following year another customer paid to have six Windsor chairs painted and tipped. Still other types of ornament are recorded in Alling's accounts. An entry made in 1840 for seating and painting a sewing chair describes the decoration as "gilding & bronzing" (fig. 2). "Bronzing" refers to stenciling, the term derived from the pulverized metallic powders used in the process. Whether painted surfaces were decorated or left plain, a final coat of varnish to protect the finish was common.[13]
A process known in woodworking circles as "coloring" was relatively common as a method of coating chair surfaces, although it did not have the popularity of painting. In coloring wooden surfaces, one or more thin coats of size, made from animal glue diluted with water, were applied to the wood to fill the pores and smooth the surface. Finely ground pigment added to a size coat produced the desired color. Elisha Hawley of Ridgefield, Connecticut, identified the color green in his accounts for 1800. A colored surface could be renewed when necessary by applying another coat of pigmented size. Alternatively, some householders requested a protective coat of varnish to seal the colored surface and protect the finish. Colored size appears to have been most common on the cheapest utilitarian seating, including kitchen chairs, four-slat and five-slat chairs, "old" chairs, low chairs, and rocking chairs, as recorded in period documents.[14]
Within the large body of general, often ambiguous, material relating to seating furniture in craftsmen's accounts is a small core of records relating to structural repairs made to formal seating. Terms such as "hair bottom," "leather," "Joiner," "compass seat" (fig. 3), and "carved" identify some of the chairs. Primary construction woods and circumstantial evidence relative to the cost and nature of the repairs serve to identify other examples. Mahogany, walnut, maple, and cherry are the woods noted, mahogany being named the most frequently. The records also contain references to repairs made to specialized seating: close-stool chairs, easy and lolling chairs, and roundabout chairs.
Deborah Morris, a wealthy Philadelphia Quaker, engaged Richard Johns in 1765 to make and repair household furniture, including "mending ye arms & Legs of a Arm Chair." Johns was a relative newcomer to the woodworking trade, having in 1760 ordered from London through William Wilson, a local merchant, a joiner's chest and an extensive selection of tools. Wilson had instructed his London factor, William Neate, that "all things be of the best and the Chest neatly fitted." A few years later James Brice, Esq., of Annapolis, Maryland, engaged the firm of John Shaw and Archibald Chisholm for work that included "putting a new top rail on a Mahogany Chair." Repairs made by Silas Cheney in 1807 at Litchfield, Connecticut, for Tapping Reeve included mending and "putting in blocks" in eight chairs. Reeve had arrived in the community in 1772 following graduation from Princeton (then the College of New Jersey) and founded the Litchfield Law School. In Newport, Rhode Island, in the lively household of Dr. Isaac Senter, who with his wife raised five children, furniture repairs were an ongoing need. Senter called on Walter Nichols in 1797 to provide "2 new front posts and [a] front rail to a mahogany chair" at a charge of 9s. Two years earlier Nichols had accommodated the family with a new arm for a mahogany chair.[15]
Anonymous repairs made to chairs identified by their primary wood include work done by notable craftsmen for clients or families of prominence. At Philadelphia in 1769 young Quaker merchant Stephen Collins called on Daniel Drinker to mend two walnut chairs. These may well have been chairs from one or both groups of walnut seating Collins bought from Drinker three years earlier at a cost of 26s. and 33s. 4d. apiece. For both new furniture and repairs Captain Lawrence Taliaferro patronized an unidentified craftsman working in the vicinity of Fredericksburg, Virginia. He is recorded as having paid the cabinetmaker 15s. for "Repairing 6 Chirrie Wood Chairs & Restuffing the Bottoms." Other records focus on unnamed repairs to mahogany chairs. In the mid-1780s both Chancellor Robert R. Livingston of New York and eminent Philadelphia merchant Stephen Girard patronized local craftsmen for repairs to their seating furniture. Thomas Burling mended "9 Mahogany Chairs much Broke" for Livingston. Daniel Trotter repaired a single chair for Girard, although his charge of 17s. 6d. suggests the seating piece was in much the same condition as the chancellor's furniture. Another eminent merchant, Elias Hasket Derby of Salem, Massachusetts, called on the Sanderson brothers, Elijah and Jacob, in 1793 to carry out repairs on six of his mahogany chairs in a period when a contemporary regional craftsman, Stephen Badlam of Dorchester near Boston, accommodated General Henry Knox by mending four carved chairs. Several decades later David Alling of Newark, New Jersey, who is known mainly as a vernacular chairmaker, undertook work for Frederick T. Frelinghuysen Jr., Esq., described as "repairing, varnishing & upholstering" two "old fashioned" mahogany chairs. Alling also fitted one of the chairs with a set of casters.[16]
The accounts of Job Danforth of Providence further detail the installation of chair casters in work undertaken for two clients. In 1803 Stephen Jackson brought a chair to the shop to be cut down and fitted with casters. The same year Elisha Dyer paid for a set of chair casters with screws to be installed. Richard Alexander's work for the Francis family of Philadelphia, although lacking detail, lists one item that is sufficiently unusual in craft records to warrant note. In an account covering numerous repairs to formal furniture, one entry dated May 28, 1820, reads, "To Repairing 7 chairs with Iren Plates."[17]
Surface coating sometimes followed formal furniture repairs. In Connecticut Silas Cheney varnished Tapping Reeve's chairs at his shop in Litchfield after repairing them with new blocks, as noted. Eight mahogany chairs varnished in Elizur Barnes's shop at Middletown were repaired and cleaned before coating. The term "clean" as used here is open to speculation. Did Barnes merely remove surface soil or did he smooth surfaces to eliminate any irregularities in the previous coat? Most surface coating of furniture took place in the woodworker's shop, whether or not repairs were made. References to varnishing furniture at a customer's house are rare, although Philemon Robbins of Hartford, along with Silas Cheney and Elizur Barnes, made note of this activity. The cost of the job likely included travel time, and Cheney also made a special charge for the varnish. Transporting furniture to and from a woodworker's shop for any type of work was the responsibility of the customer. This may be why Duncan Phyfe noted in a lengthy bill to James L. Brinckerhoof, a dry-goods merchant of New York, "Removeing & varnishing 12 chairs" and a "Sofa." The refurbishing may have been prompted by Brinckerhoof's purchase on the same date, September 29, 1815, of a "Set Dining Tables" for the substantial sum of $180.00. In lieu of varnishing furniture, householders could choose merely to have the surfaces polished. Job E. Townsend of Newport, Rhode Island, recorded in the 1790s refurbishing in this manner both black walnut and mahogany chairs.[18]
Information about upholstering seats in formal chairs, also referred to as "covering" or "stuffing" and occasionally as "bottoming," is elusive, although it is somewhat more comprehensive than that for surface coating. Of a general nature are David Alling's record of upholstering two old-fashioned mahogany chairs and a Virginia craftsman's work in restuffing six cherry chairs. Benjamin Lander's work for Joshua Ward in 1787 provided the Salem, Massachusetts, merchant with a new bottom for a "joiner comp[ass] s[ea]t" chair (fig. 3), possibly an inherited piece, given the older seat shape. New York land and real estate speculator Isaac Bronson employed a workman at Fairfield, Connecticut, to "take the covering from & clean the seats of 3 chairs" at what may have been a summer residence on Long Island.[19]
Removable stuffed seats in joined chairs are the subject of several references. Richard Magrath, a cabinetmaker and chair maker of Charleston, South Carolina, described chair bottoms of this type as "seats to take in and out." When undertaking upholstery work for Stephen Girard at Philadelphia, probably in the 1790s, Samuel Benge referred to this type of seat as "Loose." Some years later Silas Cheney was occupied part of a day at his shop in Connecticut with making a frame for a seat of this type and stuffing it, likely in a linen undercover only, as the customer charge was a mere 50¢. Another Connecticut householder sought the services of Solomon Cole at Glastonbury for "fiting Chair bottoms" at the same price.[20]
A few documents identify materials used as finish covers in restuffing chair seats. Leather was a utilitarian selection and the choice in 1813 of David S. Greenough, Esq., of Roxbury, now part of Boston. The charge for covering six chairs was $6.00. Four years earlier Captain John Derby of Salem paid Benjamin Beckford Jr. $27.00 for "new covering 12 Chairs with hair seating." Henry Connelly of Philadelphia carried out similar work at a comparable charge in 1808 for Stephen Girard. By this date haircloth had been popular with consumers for many decades. As early as 1775 William Savery mended a "hair bottom arm chair" at Philadelphia for James Pemberton. Haircloth was available in a selection of colors and in plain, striped, or patterned grounds; however, few details appear in woodworker's records. Another selection was moreen, a durable worsted, or woolen, cloth dyed in a variety of colors. The fabric might be glazed or embossed with a pattern, although the common finish was a process called "watering," which created a waved surface. Daniel Trotter of Philadelphia accommodated the merchant Samuel Coates in 1792 by "Covering 8 Chair Seats in Moreen" at a cost of £1.6.3, or $4.38 in decimal currency. The most comprehensive information on materials used in a set of replaced seat covers is detailed in Samuel Benge's work for Stephen Girard: "12 Mah'y Loose Chairs Seats restuffed; new webb, new Canvas & curld Hair with Stripe Satin Seats at 11/3" per chair. The total charge was $15.00.[21]
Woodworkers rarely noted repairs to easy chairs and lolling chairs in their accounts. Householders likely placed a substantial part of this business in the hands of the upholsterer. Records provide considerably more information on another specialized form—the "close stool," or "close-stool chair" (fig. 4). That was the preferred term for this form, although the name "night chair" also had currency among craftsmen and consumers. Variations of the term were "night cabinet" and "night pot." Mahogany is the only wood named in records describing close-stool repairs. Richard Booker, a cabinetmaker of Williamsburg, Virginia, repaired a mahogany "night Chaire" in 1791 for St. George Tucker, Esq. Other information sheds light on the nature of close-stool repairs.[22]
The principal request of close-stool owners seeking repairs was for a new seat, or bottom, in their specialized furniture. Notes of repairs carried out by David Evans in 1780 for Benjamin Saixes of Philadelphia at a cost of 10s. enlarge on this work: "to making a Seat for [a] Close stool Chair & Putting [in] a Scollop'd rail." The fancy rail, probably of some vertical depth, concealed the pot that was part of the chair's equipment (fig. 4). Some close-stool chairs received a coat of varnish at the time repairs were made. A "night chair" belonging to Samuel Larned, Esq., of Providence received both a coat of varnish and a set of casters while in the shop of H. Dancaster. Two close stools of early date and likely of box form, one repaired at Salem, Massachusetts, in September 1733 by Miles Ward and another mended in New York in 1743 at the shop of Joshua Delaplaine, had handles fixed to the wood, one set described as brass, while in the respective shops.[23]
Job E. Townsend, a cabinetmaker of Newport, Rhode Island, was among the group of craftsmen who mended close-stool chairs. One repair for John Taylor in 1808 replaced a damaged "bottom" with a new one. Townsend's work with this specialized seating also took on another aspect. Three customers approached him to "Alter . . . a Chair for a Clostool," one in 1787 and the others in 1800 and 1808. The first alteration cost 50¢, the other two 75¢ apiece, although there is no indication of what type of chairs were altered. Elizabeth Lovett of Beverly, Massachusetts, also sought this service in 1804 at the shop of Ebenezer Smith Jr. The alteration cost 75¢, and Miss Lovett paid an additional 42¢ for painting and 88¢ for a "Pan," or pot.[24]
Stools
Stools as a seating form were not abundant in society until well into the nineteenth century. The records on repair work are sparse and varied, many merely citing anonymous work, or "mending." This section will cover briefly a body of general material followed by specific references to low stools and high stools.
General references provide some insight on stools by type, function, and nature of repairs. The lingering presence of the seventeenth-century joint stool in some households is attested in the accounts of two cabinetmakers. Both Richard Johns of Philadelphia and Nathaniel Kinsman of Gloucester, Massachusetts, charged customers for "making a New Leg To Joynt stool." Several accounts describe a specialized stool, variously termed a "music," "piano," or "spinet" stool. The music stools received a coat of paint. Duncan Phyfe covered a piano stool for James L. Brinckerhoof of New York and in the same month, May 1816, repaired his piano. At Newport, Rhode Island, Christopher Champlin engaged Townsend Goddard in 1787 to put "Rails" in a spinet stool. Circumstances surrounding all the music-stool references suggest the owners were affluent members of society, and their ownership of an expensive musical instrument appears to confirm this.[25]
Craftsmen mended several stools by replacing damaged parts. In 1814 Alexander Shaw of Philadelphia provided a new top for a stool. A few years later at Middletown, Connecticut, Elizur Barnes made and installed four stool legs. A more extensive entry, made by David Alling of Newark, New Jersey, in an account dated 1838, describes work for his business customers Shugarth and Macknet: "To mending seat and putting new legs & rounds to one shop stool." The charge was 50¢. Other craftsmen "bottomed" stools, which usually describes weaving a rush seat. Alling also repaired a "broken cane seat stool" for a private customer the same year as the above work, the date suggesting the piece was a contemporary fancy stool rather than a relic of the seventeenth century.[26]
The cricket is a small stool of low height, usually in the six-to-ten-inch range. "Footstool" and "low stool" were alternative terms in the period of this study, although "cricket" was by far the common name for this form from an early date. John Gaines II of Ipswich, Massachusetts, made a new cricket as early as 1718 for the mother of one of his customers. The form came into its own, however, only after the Revolutionary War as the number of middle-class consumers in the marketplace rose substantially, and leisure time, especially among women, became more widespread. Crickets of both framed and stick construction were current in this period.[27]
Craftsmen's accounts identify the replacement of a leg or legs as the principal repair to the cricket. The cost of replacing a single leg varied from about 8 to 18¢. True Currier of Deerfield, New Hampshire, undertook more extensive work in 1834, probably to a pair of crickets, when he charged a customer 34¢ for "putting legs to crickets & painting them." The exposed surfaces of the cricket were vulnerable to wear, and a new coat of paint was a reasonable call. A good time to have the work done was when the household chairs needed refurbishing. A Mrs. Silsbee of Windsor, Vermont, engaged Thomas Boynton in 1811 to paint two armchairs and a cricket, suggesting the furniture was linked in use.[28]
Varnish was another surface coating requested by consumers. When Elizur Barnes of Middletown, Connecticut, varnished two crickets for Jacob Williams in 1822, he also recovered the tops, noting that he used "50 Nails." The charge of 50¢ for the entire job suggests the customer supplied the material for the covers. Several clients residing in larger urban centers approached cabinetmakers for more sophisticated work. In 1810 Stephen Girard of Philadelphia sent a footstool with other furniture to the shop of Henry Connelly, who charged $1.75 to recover the top. Several years earlier, Fenwick Lyell, who worked in the shadow of New York City at Middletown, New Jersey, had stuffed a pair of footstools for a customer at the substantial charge of £1.6 ($4.33).[29]
High stools were particularly useful in places of business, whether a shop or countinghouse. The high stool Thomas Boynton repaired at a charge of 25¢ in July 1816 for Stephen Conant likely stood in Conant's Windsor, Vermont, shop, a facility Boynton identified six months earlier when he sold Conant a "Candle S[t]ick for Shop." The lighting device probably was made of wood and may have been of standing form. David Alling had many business customers at his manufactory in the bustling commercial center of Newark, New Jersey, a community located a short distance by water from New York City. His record of "mending & pting a green high stool" for a customer in 1839 could well identify a seat of Windsor construction, "green" being an alternative term. Alling usually stocked a supply of "3 ft plain stool legs," which may describe the height of the green stool.[30]
Long Seats
One of the early long seats in the American household was the one-person bed, or recliner, called a couch, which was constructed with a large chair back at one end (fig. 5). The initial expense of this furniture form and its principal daytime use limited its possession primarily to affluent householders. Introduction of a caned couch from England in the late seventeenth century gave rise to a small trade in American imitations in the early eighteenth century. One example belonged to Joshua Humphries, a shipbuilder of Philadelphia, who in 1774 engaged Samuel Walton to put "Canns on a Sarfe" (canes on a sofa). Repairs made to two other couches at an early date describe examples with either cane or canvas bottoms. On February 7, 1739, John Gaines II of Ipswich, Massachusetts, entered in his accounts a job of "Carving a Top to Maj'r Apletons Couch," at a charge of 7s. 6d. for the new crest piece. Two years later at Philadelphia Solomon Fussell mended a couch for Jeremiah Elfreth Sr., a silversmith.[31]
Several references further identify the types of repairs made to couches. Job E. Townsend of Newport, Rhode Island, accommodated Captain John Oldfield in 1783 by "mending a Twisted Baul [ball] for a Couch," apparently describing a finial surmounting one of the chair-back framing posts. Repairs to "Couch bed poasts" were undertaken by Samuel Matthews in 1766 for Charles Norris, a wealthy Philadelphia merchant. Other work for Norris provides rare insight into couch accessories, as detailed in 1764 by Plunket Fleeson, an upholsterer: "To making a Case for a Couche bed and 4 pillows." Samuel Coates, another Philadelphia mercantile figure, owned a couch as late as 1792, when he employed Daniel Trotter to make repairs. Trotter, coincidentally, was the nephew of Jeremiah Elfreth Sr., the silversmith noted above.[32]
Contrary to expectations, woodworking craftsmen were considerably more active in repairing and refurbishing stuffed sofas than in mending their single-sitter counterparts, the easy chair and lolling chair. Although many account entries lack description, and the term "sofa" at times identified a vernacular-style long seat, internal evidence in some documents provides insight into stuffed-sofa repairs and the cost of the work. Four documents further describe the geographic range of shops that repaired the form. William Bentley, who worked in Butternuts (Gilbertville) in rural Otsego County, New York, completed $7.00 worth of sofa repairs for a customer in 1814, a cost that is too high for vernacular work. More modest repairs undertaken for Stephen Girard in the 1820s were completed by Michael Bouvier, a French émigré craftsman in Philadelphia. John Collins, a cabinetmaker of Portsmouth, Virginia, twice repaired a sofa for the local merchant Richard Blow, charging $9.00 in 1802, when he stuffed and covered a frame, and $3.00 two years later for miscellaneous work. It is tempting to speculate that this was the sofa shipped to Virginia in 1785 by George Seddon and Son of London and described as a "6 ft 6 Sofa, back & heads [ends] to take off, in Sattin hair cloth & brass nailed" with socket casters on the feet. In a transaction of 1786, which was likely more common than is indicated in records, David Evans, a cabinetmaker of Philadelphia, repaired a sofa at the request of an upholsterer, Thomas Hurley, rather than a private customer.[33]
Structural repairs to sofas, when identified, focus on the legs and vary from making a repair, as recorded in 1806 by John Sager of Bordentown, New Jersey, to replacing a leg, as noted by Fenwick Lyell of Middletown. Several craftsmen supplied and installed casters. Samuel and Joseph Rawson of Providence undertook this work in 1842 for Samuel W. Greene, Esq. During earlier sofa repairs Greene acquired two pillows. Sometimes a coat of varnish supplemented repairs. Albert C. Greene, Esq., had this work done in 1834 by John G. Hopkins of Providence. In 1791, not long after removing from New York City to the new seat of national government at Philadelphia, General Henry Knox, secretary of war, called on Pennell Beale for a variety of cabinetwork, including mending and restuffing a sofa.[34]
Repairs to the settee form, as documented in records, describe vernacular seating. The types of work called for are best summarized in the accounts of David Alling of Newark, New Jersey, and Silas Cheney, of Litchfield, Connecticut, active woodworkers in the early nineteenth century. Both men produced and mended cane-seat and rush-seat fancy settees and wood-bottom Windsor settees. Alling made particular note in 1837 of altering, repairing, and putting new arms on four Windsor settees. When the repairs were complete, he painted the settees "plain yellow," a perfect complement to seating whose turned work simulated bamboo. Another time Alling repaired a settee painted green, a Windsor color that had its genesis in early-eighteenth-century England, when Windsors initially were used out of doors in the grounds of country estates. Work in both shops also included ornamenting painted surfaces. Striping and gilding are mentioned. On one occasion in 1815, when Cheney painted and gilded a settee, he noted the work was equal to that of five chairs and charged accordingly. When necessary, a craftsman undertook the task of "cleaning off seats" before repainting. Varnish, a common surface-coating material, often was used after repainting or "tuching up." It also was the common finish on unpainted wood. After repairing a partial suite of curled maple seating, consisting of two chairs, two long seats, and two short settees, Alling varnished the wood and then rubbed the surface to enhance the sheen.[35]
The bench, a utilitarian object, was useful both inside and outside the home. When Paul Jenkins of Kennebunk, Maine, repaired a bench in 1839, he noted specifically that it was for the house. Few other notices provide more than a general note of repair work. Jacob Brouwer mended a small bench in 1798 for Nicholas Low, a New York City merchant and upstate landholder. This was also the year that Peter Ranck, a German-American woodworker from Lebanon County, Pennsylvania, mended and painted a bench for a customer, along with supplying a new bench. Not all benches were for sitting, as demonstrated in a job recorded in 1823 by Elizur Barnes of Middletown, Connecticut: "painting Bench green for Flower pots."[36]
Children's Furniture
Chairs and cradles are the furniture forms for children that suffered most from daily use and required regular attention by the local woodworker. Children's low chairs (as opposed to high chairs) are identified by several names in craftsmen's records. Most common is "little chair," followed by "child's chair," then "small chair." Some confusion surrounds the term "small chair" because at times it appears to identify a small adult's chair or a youth's chair. Confirmation of the term's use to identify children's seating on occasion occurs in a bill of 1837 directed by W. and R. Tucker of Albany, New York, to Peter Gansevoort, Esq.: "1 Small chair for child."[37]
The majority of children's chairs requiring repair work were of the vernacular type (fig. 6). The records consulted are almost devoid of references to examples made of fine cabinet woods. Given the economies practiced in many American households in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, this is understandable. Similar to the material referencing adult seating, specific repairs to children's chairs are identified only infrequently: chair bottoming with rush was common, rockers were a moderately popular enhancement, and a few special references are worthy of note.
Two accounts describe early activity in "mending and bottoming" a "Childs" chair and a "Littel" chair. Jacob Hinsdale of Harwinton in western Connecticut charged 1s. circa 1728 for this work. Four years later at Newbury in coastal Massachusetts, Joseph Brown Jr. charged only slightly more. Similar records continue well into the nineteenth century. Another seating job, probably using a wood bottom, was that described by Job E. Townsend of Newport, Rhode Island: "To Putting a New Bottom to a Small Chair with a hole in the Same." Other records contain particular information about structural repairs. In 1758 Isaiah Tiffany, a furniture craftsman and general storekeeper of Norwich, Connecticut, put both a new arm and a new bottom in a little chair. A new arm in a child's chair was still a call years later in 1836 at the Wytheville, Virginia, shop of Thomas J. Moyers and Fleming K. Rich. By the start of the nineteenth century, chair rockers, which were becoming popular for adult seating, were also an option for children's chairs. When George Landon undertook this work for a customer in 1818 at his shop in Erie, Pennsylvania, he found it necessary first to replace the "feet," or legs. Other rocker installations were initiated because of the need to replace a chair bottom, or woven seat, as recorded at Framingham, Massachusetts, in 1810 by Abner Haven.[38]
Repairs and/or new bottoms often went hand in hand with repainting. When Elizur Barnes mended, painted, and ornamented a little chair for a customer in 1823 at Middletown, Connecticut, he identified it as part of a suite containing eight adult chairs refurbished at the same time. A year earlier Barnes had painted the woven seat of a little chair, thereby enhancing both its durability and appearance. Making or mending children's seating was fairly routine by the early nineteenth century at the Newark, New Jersey, chair manufactory of David Alling. The facility also undertook specialized ornamental work when refurbishing these chairs, described as "tipping" and "striping," which introduced fine or broad lines to the painted surfaces. Coloring wood with pigment in size was another technique borrowed from adult seating to enrich children's chairs. Evidence of its use in Rhode Island, for example, ranges from the bottoming and coloring undertaken by Daniel Dunham for the Senter family at Newport in 1788 to similar work recorded in 1825 in the accounts of Daniel and Samuel Proud at Providence. Varnish was an uncommon surface coating for refurbished children's chairs; however, William Savery of Philadelphia undertook this work in 1772 for General John Cadwalader.[39]
Two early references to high-chair mending by William Savery for Joseph Pemberton, a Quaker merchant of Philadelphia, appear to refer to the same piece of furniture. Unspecified repairs made to a "childs high Chair" in February 1774 cost 1s. Less than a year later, in January 1775, the cost of repairing a high chair identified as walnut was the same. Thomas Boynton had only just begun his woodworking career when he painted a "childs dining chair" in 1811. At this date he was in Boston, although he soon removed to the neighborhood of Windsor, Vermont. "Dining" was a favored term among Windsor chair-makers for the child's tall chair. At Bennington, Henry F. Dewey identified still another style of dining chair in 1841, when he matted a high chair and painted the wooden surfaces. Until well into the nineteenth century, most children's high chairs were devoid of footrests and feeding trays. The purpose of the tall chair was to accommodate the child at the family dining table. Thus, David Alling's reference to making a "table for [a] childs chr" at Newark, New Jersey, in 1839 is unusual and may have heralded the start of an innovation that changed dining patterns for young children.[40]
Few references to mending, or repairing, children's cradles provide details (fig. 7). The exception is the repair or replacement of rockers. In view of the cradle's constant use in the early American home, the extent of this work comes as no surprise. The cost ranged from 16.7 cents (1s.) to one dollar, with the majority of charges falling between 25 and 62 1/2¢, an indication that replacement rather than repair was the usual approach. Rockers made of a fine cabinet wood—mahogany and cherry are named—cost 50¢ or more. The accounts of John Durand, a turner and woodworker of coastal Milford, Connecticut, contain unusual terminology when identifying rocker replacement work. In June 1767 Durand debited the account of a Doctor Carrington by about 42¢ for "Cradle feet and putting on." Entries in the accounts of two other craftsmen, Fenwick Lyell of Middletown, New Jersey, and Job E. Townsend of Newport, Rhode Island, describe another repair: "Puting a new top to a Cradle." If in use at all, the term "hood" for a cradle top likely was rare.[41]
A body of material highlighting cradle repairs at Philadelphia provides further insight into and may reflect activity in other urban centers from the mid-1750s to the early 1780s. Named in the records are cabinetmakers of moderate to prominent stature: Thomas Affleck, George Claypoole, Daniel Drinker, Samuel Matthews, William Savery, Francis Trumble, Thomas Tufft, and Samuel Williams. Equally impressive is the list of patrons, all influential members of the merchant community in the city: Stephen Collins, Michael Gratz, Levi Hollingsworth, Samuel Meredith, Charles Norris and his widow Mary Norris, Joseph Pemberton, and Thomas Wharton. Collins, Hollingsworth, and perhaps others also owned interests in sailing vessels, and Wharton included maritime brokerage in his business. Part of the work William Savery carried out for Joseph Pemberton in 1774 was "Making Rockers to a Mahogany Cradle," as indicated in an account entry dated May 13. Savery appears to have mended the same mahogany cradle less than a year later on January 21, 1775. Samuel Matthews made several cradle repairs for Charles Norris during the 1760s. He first installed a new bottom and followed that shortly with mending and polishing a cradle, an activity that suggests the cradle was made of a fine cabinet wood. Several years later Matthews altered a cradle for the family, although the nature of the alteration is not indicated.[42]
Polish is just one of several surface coatings for cradles mentioned in furniture records. More common was a new coat of varnish, which sometimes followed repair work, as indicated in 1829 by Elisha Harlow Holmes of Essex, Connecticut. Several craftsmen made note of painting a cradle. Joseph Griswold of Buckland, Massachusetts, was quite specific in 1817, when he recorded "painting Cradle once." The charge was 25¢. Job Danforth of Providence followed a job of mending a cradle in 1805 by staining the surfaces.[43]
Rarely mentioned in craftsmen's accounts are cradles constructed primarily of woven plant material. Richard Alexander, a cabinetmaker of Philadelphia, in undertaking extensive work for Mrs. John Francis, recorded on April 24, 1820, that he had put "a pair of Rockers in a Willow Cradle." The willow (genus Salix), a shrub or small tree with pliant branches and shoots, was suitable for basketwork. This may be the same material identified by Elizur Barnes in 1822, when he noted in his accounts a job of "putting Rockers on Basket Cradle" for Reuben Chaffee of Middletown, Connecticut.[44]
References to mending children's cribs date, for the most part, to the post-Revolutionary period. An exception is William Savery's job of painting a crib in 1774 for Joseph Pemberton of Philadelphia. At New York in 1813, Jacob Brouwer described this furniture form as a "cribe bedsted" when he carried out extensive repair work on the household furniture of Nicholas Low. The mahogany crib Brouwer repaired for the merchant a decade earlier may have been the same child's bedstead. Like the cradle, the crib was subject to considerable wear, as noted in a bill to St. George Tucker of Williamsburg, Virginia, from Rookesby Roberts, who in 1794 installed "fore legs" and a bottom in a child's crib and charged $1.25. Alterations to cribs occurred from time to time. Elizur Barnes of Middletown, Connecticut, noted one in 1823, when he lengthened a crib and bored holes in the horizontal frame to receive a cord lacing.[45]
Furniture craftsmen undertook repairs to several other specialized forms for children. Twice, Joseph Pemberton of Philadelphia called on William Savery to mend a "hobby horse," once in 1774 and again in 1775. Meanwhile, Charles Norris, another member of the merchant community, had engaged Samuel Matthews on several occasions during the 1760s to mend a "go-cart." This term describes a small cage, or pen, sometimes fitted with wheels used to teach a child to walk and to control its movements once that skill had been mastered. Other craftsmen associated with go-cart repairs include John Durand of Milford, Connecticut, and Job E. Townsend of Newport, Rhode Island. In identifying go-cart repairs Townsend sometimes used the alternative term "standing stool" and indicated that he both mended and painted this form during the 1790s. In the following decade the term appears in the accounts of Job Danforth of Providence, who charged 1s. to repair a standing stool. Solomon Cole's fee for this work at Glastonbury, Connecticut, in 1799 was about the same.[46]
Bedsteads
The number of unidentified bedstead repairs in woodworkers' accounts is substantial; however, the presence of a modest body of more detailed material provides cogent insights. Many repairs included both mending and supplying new parts for the bedstead, the wooden frame that supports the bed (mattress) and bedding. Repaired and replaced bedstead parts identified in the records consulted can be ranked from most to least frequently mentioned: bedposts, headboards and footboards, post-top structures, bed screws and accessories, bedrails, casters, and trundles (wheels). In the course of recording bedstead repairs, craftsmen occasionally identified the principal structural woods, although by no means is this short list inclusive of the options: mahogany, black walnut, red cedar, and birch.
Many craftsmen fashioned one or more new posts for clients' bedsteads. Descriptive information in several late-eighteenth-century accounts is revealing. Two craftsmen, David Evans of Philadelphia and an unidentified woodworker of Middletown, New Jersey, fabricated footposts for client's bedsteads at the modest figures of 1s. 6d. and 1s. per post, respectively, suggesting they were of low height and common wood. Cost comparison indicates that Joseph Griswold's 83¢ (5s.) replacement post for a customer at Buckland, Massachusetts, probably was of tall form. This supposition seems confirmed in the records of Job E. Townsend of Newport, Rhode Island, who made a pair of high posts for a customer's bedstead, charging 5s. 3d. apiece. Townsend had already repaired another bedstead for a customer and made "Two Black Walnuts Posts fluted" for 18s. Adjusting for the unnamed repairs, each walnut post could have cost 7 or 8s. apiece, suggesting that the cheaper high posts were made of a cabinet wood of lesser stature, such as maple (fig. 8).[47]
A few documents identify turning as the method of fabricating some replacement posts. The cost was low. Joseph Short of Newburyport, Massachusetts, undertook more detailed work for Abigail Woodbury in 1818, when he turned just the "lower ends of 2 long bedposts" and varnished the new supports along with the headposts, which were plain because they would be concealed by the bed curtains. Several craftsmen working in the first decade of the nineteenth century undertook a job for clients described in records as "splicing Bedstead posts." Sometimes all four posts were treated in this manner. The expense was minimal, and the work does not appear to have been initiated due to broken posts. The purpose of the activity is unclear. Was this a way to convert a low-post frame to a high-post bedstead or to update old or plain posts in style or embellishment, using the original feet or bases? Indeed, Nehemiah Adams of Salem, Massachusetts, spliced and varnished "old posts" in 1808 for Captain Benjamin Webb. Perhaps Ebenezer Smith Jr's. work at "Piecing bed Posts" in neighboring Beverly for Robert Rantoul, and Cook and Greene's job at Providence in "raising up bed post[s]" for Richard W. Greene describe the same work. Two embellishments for post tips, recorded by Paul Jenkins of Kennebunk, Maine, and Vose and Coates of Boston, respectively, were balls and urns. Work at the lower ends of the posts, described by John Hockaday in Williamsburg, Virginia, as "plinthing . . . four mehogoney Bedstead posts," appears to have introduced a low block to the base of each foot or cased the bases to resemble blocks (fig. 8). The purpose of similar work undertaken at Newport, Rhode Island, for Mary Ann Marble was spelled out in specific terms by Job E. Townsend: "To Making four Blocks for To Raise her Bedstid."[48]
Next to bedposts, headboards are mentioned most frequently in craftsmen's records. A few were mended; however, most appear to have been replacements or entirely new additions to the frame. Most repairs were modest. Thomas Boynton's charge of 13¢ for a headboard repair at Windsor, Vermont, in 1817 was comparable to that made by Elizur Barnes five years later at Middletown, Connecticut. The cost of a new board was at times not much more. Fifty cents or less covered most purchases. The form was simple, given that fabrication and installation required less than half a day of the craftsman's time, as indicated by the cost. Boards of this type were made in the late eighteenth century at Philadelphia by William Wayne for his customer merchant Stephen Collins and at Providence by Job Danforth for prominent pewterer Gershom Jones. At 3s. 6d. (58 1/2¢) General Henry Knox paid slightly more for a headboard bought from William Roberts in 1795 for his house at the seat of government in Philadelphia.[49]
Some craftsmen furnished both a headboard and a footboard to fill a customer's order. Elisha Crane, a cabinetmaker of Albany, New York, carried out work of this description in 1824 for Peter Gansevoort, Esq. When a craftsman supplied a board, he might undertake other bedstead work. Josiah P. Wilder, a chairmaker of New Ipswich, New Hampshire, made a footboard for a customer in 1839 and then completed the job by painting the entire bedstead. Two customer orders dating to the 1820s stand above the others in cost and sophistication. In a three-party transaction at Middletown, Connecticut, Elizur Barnes supplied John B. Southmayd, a craftsman, with "8 feet Shaded Veneers for Headboard for Mrs Lewis Bedsted." In New York Henrietta Low, daughter of merchant Nicholas Low, employed Abraham S. Egerton in February 1824 to panel "the ends" of her bedstead, that is, the headboard and footboard, at a cost of $10.00. Less than a month later, Nicholas Low himself paid Egerton the same sum for similar work to his bedstead.[50]
Basic to the post-top structure of a tall bedstead is a slender wood framework that joins the posts and is secured to the tops by means of vertical pins known as "pintles." Craftsmen identified this skeletal frame by various terms, including "Strips for teaster," "vallance rails," "side pieces to a Bedsted top," and "curtain rails." The framework supported a short cloth valance, or tester, tacked to the top surface and suspended. Paul Jenkins repaired a tester in 1838 for a customer at Kennebunk, Maine. When introducing a newly fabricated valance, the installation required careful "fitting," as indicated by George Merrifield of Albany, New York. The word "cornice" appears at times to have been an alternative term for this feature. Other cornices were more massive structures made of wood. A "Sett bed cornices" made by Nehemiah Adams at Salem, Massachusetts, in 1808 for Captain Benjamin Webb was "gilt" and cost a substantial $8.00. Several decades earlier Joseph Pemberton of Philadelphia had ordered a "Scollop'd" bed cornice complete with pulleys for drawing the curtains from William Savery at a cost of £1.5 (approximately $4.17). Sometimes a ceiling cloth filled the void inside the framework of the top, a fixture described by Alexander Low of Freehold, New Jersey, as a "roof." The top frame also served to secure rods to accommodate full-length bed curtains, which could be made to open and close or draw up in festoons. For this purpose Daniel Trotter spent part of a day in 1793 "fixing pullies" in a bedstead for prominent Philadelphia merchant Stephen Girard. The "canopy top" mentioned in several craftsmen's records appears to have been a complete unit of cloth, consisting of a roof, valances, and, at times, perhaps, the curtains.[51]
Periodically, the rails that form the basic framing of the bedstead required attention. Joseph Pemberton of Philadelphia called on William Savery in 1775 for this type of work. Two bedsteads owned by William Lord and identified as birch by Paul Jenkins in 1837, when brought to his shop in Kennebunk, Maine, required moderate work, consisting between them of two new rails and alterations to a headboard. In the shop at the same time was Lord's mahogany bedstead, which was refurbished with "2 new side rales & headboard & balls to posts." Some years earlier Fenwick Lyell had put a mahogany rail in a bedstead for a customer at Middletown, New Jersey. Lyell's bedstead work also included other tasks that were a frequent call at American woodworking shops. On one occasion when he repaired a field bedstead with "new Sides" and a post, he also supplied "5 Screws," the metal bolts used to secure the mortise-and-tenon joints at the four corners of many bedstead frames. Another time Lyell installed "Caps" on a bedstead, the small pivoting metal disks used to conceal the screw heads (fig. 8). Daniel Trotter described the material of these caps as brass in 1790, when he repaired a mahogany bedstead at Philadelphia for Stephen Girard. Two prominent New England cabinetmakers carried out similar work for their patrons. William Hook of Salem, Massachusetts, supplied a "Set of New Caps" for a field bedstead belonging to Benjamin Hathorne (Hawthorne), and Townsend Goddard of Newport, Rhode Island, fixed the screws in a bedstead owned by Christopher Champlin. Relative to installing bed screws, The Workwoman's Guide, first published in 1838, advised using a "bed key to turn each screw till firmly fixed in the hole."[52]
The installation of casters on bedstead feet, whether at purchase or as a later addition, introduced a measure of mobility to an otherwise unwieldy form. St. George Tucker of Williamsburg, Virginia, found a good opportunity in 1806 to have two casters replaced when he sent his bed frame to the cabinet shop of John Hockaday for repairs. The complete "Set of Castors for Bedstead" that William Ranken provided two decades later for Philadelphia merchant Samuel Coates at a cost of $1.00 appears to have replaced a damaged set, as no new installation charge was made. A more complete record is work done for Richard W. Greene of Providence by the Cleveland Brothers, when in 1844 the firm billed him $1.75 for "Brass Castors for Bedstead & putting in." Craftsmen provided wheels of a different type for the trundle bedstead. Samuel Douglas of Connecticut described the fabrication method in 1816, when charging a customer 34¢ for "turning 8 rounds for trundle bead." Other craftsmen referred to these cylinders of wood as "trundles," a term that also identifies the low bedstead fitted with wheels, permitting it to be rolled away beneath a larger frame. Two early references to supplying "Trundles for a Bedsted" in the accounts of Peter Emerson of Reading, Massachusetts, and Robert Crage of Leicester date to 1756 and 1759, respectively. Years later, in 1811, Titus Preston of Wallingford, Connecticut, precisely identified the purpose of similar work, when he recorded "puting trundles to a trundle bedsted."[53]
The application of some type of coating to refurbish worn bedstead frames or to cover a repair or addition was a fairly common task in the woodworking shop. Varnish, paint, stain, color, oil, and blacking all are mentioned in craftsmen's accounts, although the latter three are uncommon. Woodworkers usually applied varnish on its own; occasionally it covered a fresh coat of stain. Painting was the most common way to refurbish a worn surface, however. Sometimes a customer deposited more than one bedstead for repainting at the shop of the local woodworker, and on occasion a repair was involved. When Joseph Griswold of Buckland, Massachusetts, repainted two bedsteads for Jesse Pratt in 1822, he also put a new post in one frame. Some bedstead parts were painted independent of the main frame. Both John Sager of Bordentown, New Jersey, and George Landon of Erie, Pennsylvania, recorded their work in painting bed cornices. Of the color options available for painted bedsteads, green alone is mentioned in a few references; most records are without description. David Evans painted a bedstead green in 1791 at Philadelphia. Similar work carried out by Silas Cheney at Litchfield, Connecticut, some years later also included replacing a side rail in his customer's bedstead.[54]
Parallels exist in the type of work undertaken by woodworkers when customers chose stain instead of paint. Sometimes a craftsman refurbished and stained more than one bed frame for a householder. At other times he merely added finish to a new feature. Job E. Townsend of Newport, Rhode Island, made a "roof" for a bedstead in 1802 and finished it with stain. When choosing stain, the customer had several options. A patron of Josiah P. Wilder's shop at New Ipswich, New Hampshire, chose to have his stained frame varnished to protect the colored surface. Jacob Rodriguez Rivera, a Newport, Rhode Island, merchant who was a customer of Benjamin Baker, selected a cheaper finish by having his newly stained bedstead polished. Silas Cheney described another option when he oiled a stained bed frame at Litchfield, Connecticut, for Oliver Wolcott. Some bedsteads were oiled without further surface treatment.[55]
Short of having an entire bedstead revarnished, some customers elected to have their woodworker coat only the repaired or replaced parts, including cornices, testers, headboards, rails, and posts. At Williamsburg, Virginia, St. George Tucker engaged John Hockaday in 1812 for "plinthing, Working Over, and Varnish[ing] four mehogoney Bedstead posts." Some work required that bedstead surfaces be "smoothed," probably scraped, before varnishing. Occasionally, a customer requested special work, as when Miles Benjamin of Cooperstown, New York, recorded, "Varnishing bedstead twice." The accounts of Solomon Fussell of Philadelphia, which date principally to the 1740s, name two other surface finishes that could be sealed with a coat of varnish. In August 1741 Fussell charged Thomas Sugar 1s. 6d. for "blacking and varnishing the Cornish [cornice] of a bead tester." Two years later he "colored" and varnished a bed cornice for Benjamin Franklin at the same charge. Coloring utilized a size coating mixed with powdered pigment to the desired shade. This finish remained a limited option for bedsteads into the early nineteenth century, when in 1809 Oliver Avery of North Stonington, Connecticut, colored a bedstead at the request of Aaron Newton.[56]
The sacking bottom was the most common support for the bed (mattress) and bedding that furnished a bedstead. The sacking filled the entire area within the open frame formed by the bed rails (fig. 8). Craftsmen placed sacking bottoms in all types of bed frames—high post, low post, field, press, and trundle. The material of this sturdy support is identified in a bill of 1772 from upholsterer Thomas Lawrence of Philadelphia to Stephen Collins: "To Sail Duck & mending Sacking Bottom." Duck is a strong linen fabric, lighter than canvas, with a glazed surface that sheds water; thus the name. A stout grade was serviceable for heavy use. Craftsmen's records also provide insights on the various methods of installing the sacking bottom. Most common was lacing the sacking directly to the inside frame of the bedstead, using cord interlaced through grommets spaced along the outside edges of the rectangular sacking cloth. When Henrietta Low of New York employed Abraham S. Egerton to panel the ends of her bedstead in 1824, she also ordered a "new sacking bottom & cord." To secure the lacing to the bed frame, a rabbet along the interior face of the rails was fitted with small spaced pegs, probably of mushroom shape to prevent the cord from slipping off. John Paine, a woodworker of Southold, Long Island, described the fabrication method of these small knobs in a 1797 account entry: "To turn 15 pags [pegs] for bedsted." The terminology varied. Earlier, in 1765, John Durand of Milford, Connecticut, recorded turning "butens" for a bedstead. These were not the most common names, however. In the period between 1767 and 1814 at least four craft shops—those of John and William Richmond and John Danforth at Providence, Charles C. Robinson at Philadelphia, and Aaron Leaming at Cape May, New Jersey—used the word "pin" to describe these small knobs. The bedstead illustrated in figure 8 has an unusual system of pins. The small cylinders are secured within a channel cut into the upper inside face of the rails.[57]
Job Townsend Jr. of Newport described another method of installing a sacking bottom in a bed frame in 1762, when working at the house of William Wanton, a governor of Rhode Island: "to Nailing on a Bed Sacking . . . To Leathar for Ditto." In this process Townsend nailed a narrow strip of material, probably the leather, to either the rail tops or an interior rabbet. This border was then laced to the main sacking panel. Paralleling Townsend's work was another job undertaken in the community less than two decades later for Jacob Rodriguez Rivera by Benjamin Baker, who billed the merchant for "glewing sacking in Bedsted." The support system appears to have been similar to that of Wanton's frame—a border, lacing, and sacking panel. Had the sacking been one large unit glued to the bed frame, it would have been impossible to disassemble the bedstead for repairs or moving without compromising the sacking. No matter what the method of installing the sacking, the author of The Workwoman's Guide advised that the lacing be of strong cord and "be pulled together and knotted by a man, as a woman is scarcely strong enough to do it effectually."[58]
In 1767, when Jesse Hand discharged a debt with woodworker Aaron Leaming at Cape May, New Jersey, he provided payment in the form of two bedstead frames. One, as noted above, was fitted "with pins for a Sackin bottom." The other was "a Beadsted with holes for a cord." This type of support system appears to have been considerably less common than the sacking bottom. The "new cord" for bedsteads acquired at New York a year apart in the mid-1810s by Nicholas Low and James L. Brinckerhoof from Jacob Brouwer and Duncan Phyfe, respectively, may have been for frames with this type of support for the bed and bedding, as neither account makes mention of a sacking.[59]
A single reference to the use of rope in "putting up the old Bed" describes the uncommon occurrence of that support system versus the sacking bottom, or even the corded bottom, in the American bedstead. A few references document still another uncommon type of mattress support in this study, best described in a bill of 1809 from John T. Ball of New York to Nicholas Low: "repairing & putting slatt bottom to bedsted." Other individuals who ordered slats for a bedstead include Richard W. Greene of Providence and Mrs. St. George Tucker of Williamsburg, Virginia.[60]
A regular, recurring activity in the lives of householders and woodworkers and one easily overlooked in furniture studies was the routine assembly and disassembly of the bedstead and its accessories. Some households seem always to have been in a flurry of "putting up" and "taking down" their bed frames or parts thereof. The reasons for this activity, which brought the woodworker to the house of the client, are varied. Most obvious is the erection of a newly purchased frame or the disassembly of another one for repair, surface refurbishing, alteration, or the addition of an accessory, such as a set of casters. Seasonal cleaning sometimes necessitated the disassembly of the bedstead, as vermin were always a problem in a society with few window screens or effective insecticides. Even relocating a bed frame from one room to another required that it be dismantled to negotiate doorways, hallways, and staircases. If the main frame did not require assembly or disassembly, a householder might focus on particular accessories. Samuel Morris, a member of the Philadelphia merchant community, called on David Evans in 1775 to put up both a cornice and a set of tester rails. Elizabeth Bleecker McDonald was a newlywed in New York in 1800, when she noted in her diary on November 21, "A snow stormy morning—the first snow that has fallen this season . . . my Bed Curtains were put up." Once the cold weather had passed, the bed curtains were taken down to provide adequate ventilation during the warm months.[61]
Still another reason for disassembling the bedstead loomed large in the lives of some householders. It is best described in a bill dated June 24, 1828, at Philadelphia by William Ranken and directed to his client Samuel Coates: "[to] taken down & puting up Bedsteads at moving." Nowhere was this activity more prominent than at New York. During a visit to America in the 1790s, Moreau de St. Méry observed: "A strange habit of New Yorkers is their mania for moving on May 1, if they do not own a house. This moving must be seen to be believed." Several years later Frances M. Trollope, inveterate British traveler and commentator, offered a more detailed picture of this "changing house once a year": "On the 1st of May the city of New York has the appearance of sending off a population flying from the plague, or of a town which had surrendered on condition of carrying away all their goods and chattels. Rich furniture and ragged furniture, carts, waggons, and drays, ropes, canvas, and straw, packers, porters, and draymen . . . occupy the streets from east to west, from north to south."[62]
The more affluent the American household, the more substantial the year-round disposition of bedsteads was likely to be. John Eyre's work for the first Samuel Powel at Philadelphia in 1736 included "taking down" and "Seting up" no fewer than six bedsteads in the month of September alone. Three of those frames were furnished with a cornice. A running account of William Savery's work for the Joseph Pemberton family several decades later details a varied and significant amount of bedstead work. Between June 30, 1774, and January 16, 1775, Savery took down five bedsteads and set up six. In addition he made a scalloped bed cornice, a bedstead made of stained poplar, and a plain, but large, mahogany bedstead, all requiring assembly. Savery's charge for the disassembly and reassembly of a bedstead was 1s. 6d., or 25¢ in the decimal currency introduced in the 1790s. In calculating a master craftsman's average pay at 6s. ($1.00) a day, the complete work of taking down and putting up one bed frame required one-quarter of a working day, one that at best was no fewer than ten hours. These figures are corroborated in an account recorded by Hiram Taylor of neighboring Chester County, Pennsylvania: "To half day at putting up bedsteads" (two) at 50¢. Much the same activity described for the household of Joseph Pemberton occurred in that of Stephen Girard in the mid-1780s and again in the mid-1790s, as recorded by his cabinetmaker of choice, Daniel Trotter.[63]
Equally substantial was work carried out in New York for Nicholas Low by Jacob Brouwer from June through September 1796, when the cabinetmaker took down nine bed frames and set up eleven. Brouwer was still Low's cabinetmaker in 1813-1814, when the figures for similar work were almost the same. One account entry stands out, however: "A bedsted on loan takeing down & putting up" at 16s. Even a household well equipped with sleeping accommodations might on occasion require a temporary supplement. By the early nineteenth century urban craftsmen, in particular, frequently had a small store of used furniture taken in trade for new, which was available for loan or resale.[64]
As a body of furniture, bedsteads were subject to a significant number of alterations. Frames were made wider, or narrower, or shorter, and sometimes both shorter and narrower. In the course of this work and in carrying out general repairs, craftsmen occasionally identified the style of bedstead either directly or by inference. In converting a high-post bedstead to a low-post frame for the Norris family of Philadelphia, Thomas Tufft described what the work entailed: "To pulling down and puting up a bedsted Cuting posts and mending." At times the procedure was reversed, as in 1826 when Allen Holcomb of New Lisbon in central New York State altered a field bedstead to a high-post frame and finished the work with a coat of varnish. A more radical conversion occurred when David Evans of Philadelphia made a high-post bedstead out of a low-post frame. When the alteration was complete, Evans stained the tall frame, resecured the post-and-rail joints with four new screws, and fitted the frame with a new cornice. Converting the bedstead led to other work for the client's bedchamber. Evans next made a trundle bedstead and stained it to coordinate with the tall frame. The cabinetmaker completed the job by making "4 window rails with boards." The total bill came to £6.10 ($21.67).[65]
The field bedstead, with its medium-high posts and flat, peaked, or low-arched roof, began as a frame suitable for military use; therefore, it originally was hinged to fold completely into a case for travel. The folding feature was retained in some nonmilitary use, as demonstrated in 1772 in the work of an unidentified Middletown, New Jersey, cabinetmaker for George Taylor, "tavern keeper": "to making of lath for a feild bed & finding of hinges." The folding feature of this new canopy frame for the bedstead would have been of particular relevance in a public inn, where furnishings were moved about frequently. Other craftsmen provided replacement side rails or corner posts for field bedsteads owned by their patrons.[66]
The "press," or "turn-up," bedstead was reasonably popular in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, judging by the number of standard bedsteads converted to this form (fig. 9). Raised and concealed by day behind the curtains of a short tester frame, within a slipcover, or inside a cupboardlike box, the folding bedstead could be lowered, ready for service, at nightfall. Nehemiah Adams altered a bedstead "to Turn up" for a mariner client in 1808 at Salem, Massachusetts. True Currier, who worked across the border in Exeter, New Hampshire, referred to this frame as a "Rule joint Bedstead." With the side rails jointed near the headposts, the entire frame folded up close to the wall, the pivoting front legs dropping when raised to lie flat against the frame. Account entries of several craftsmen attest to the use on occasion of a wooden box, called a "press," to conceal the bed frame. When Elizur Barnes of Middletown, Connecticut, altered a bedstead in 1822 to turn up, he also charged his client for "Making Case to Enclose Bedsted." At a later date George Merrifield of Albany, New York, entered a charge in his accounts for repairing a door to a bedstead press. Hartwell Holmes had already spent an entire day at Woodstock, Connecticut, painting a "Bed press" for a customer, as indicated by his $1.00 charge.[67]
The "cot bedstead" mended by several craftsmen appears to have been a frame for stationary use rather than the hanging bed of the same name used by mariners and suspended from ships' beams. George Merrifield of Albany referred to the form as a "Camp Cot" when making repairs in 1838, suggesting that some cots could be folded for easy transport. Ephraim Haines, a prominent Philadelphia cabinetmaker, replaced "a Bottom on [a] Cott Bedstead" for Stephen Girard in 1802 on the same day he sold a painted low-post bedstead to the merchant. Putting new legs on a cot bedstead nine years later was one task of many undertaken by Langley Boardman at Portsmouth, New Hampshire, for the household of Captain Reuben S. Randall. Providing insight on the appearance of the cot form in the early nineteenth century is a small image in a printed plate of bedstead forms in The Workwoman's Guide, a volume first published in London in 1838. The image depicts a rectangular lath-type wooden frame stretched with a laced canvas and supported on X-shaped legs at the head and foot. The illustrated low rectangular headboard was slotted into the frame for easy removal; otherwise, the crossed legs of the bed frame would not have folded for storage or transport.[68]
Tables
Most repair work noted in craftsmen's records references tables of anonymous type, although the nature, range, and extent of activity provide a comprehensive overview of repair work to the form as a whole. The work falls into four categories: general repairs; installation of new parts; surface smoothing, identified by the terms "planing," "dressing," "smoothing," "scraping," and "cleaning"; and surface coating. In addition, a few notations relate to table alterations.
The language of table repairs is much like that for chairs. "Mend" was the word of choice over "repair" by more than two to one, and the terms "fix" and "work on" appear in records only occasionally. The introduction of a new table part often is preceded by the words "put on" or "put in." Only on rare occasions is the material of the table identified. Named are cherry, mahogany, maple, pine, poplar, and walnut. Mahogany is recorded more than all the other woods combined, likely because of its market stature rather than its household prevalence. John Sager of Bordentown, New Jersey, and Hiram Taylor of Chester County, Pennsylvania, identified work on pairs of tables, and in both instances the wood was mahogany. Table shapes identified in repair work are round, oval, and square, in that order of frequency, although all such references are uncommon. Of more frequent occurrence are notations of size—large and small, and a number of craftsmen made special note when making repairs to "old" tables.[69]
The body of material identifying repairs to tables by special task, although small, appears representative of the types of jobs undertaken by craftsmen for their clients. A minor job noted by Jacob Brouwer in 1810 was the repair of a "table Ketch" (possibly a tea table) for the New York household of Nicholas Low, a task that required at least half a day, judging by the charge of 4s. (67¢). Oliver Moore repaired a drawer lock several years later for a customer at East Granby, Connecticut. Structural repairs were more usual. Isaiah Tiffany recorded a single task of "mending a Table frame" at Norwich in 1757, although this work often accompanied repairs to a tabletop or leaf. In 1790 Walter Nichols focused on mending the end rails and legs of a mahogany table for the Senter family of Newport, Rhode Island. Other craftsmen mended table drawers. Benona Segar of western Connecticut paid 8¢ in 1812 for drawer repairs, the same price as his new rolling pin.[70]
Table-leg repairs often were part of a larger job at the cabinet shop. When listed alone, the cost appears to have been moderate. Repairs to a single leg in a federal-period table in the early nineteenth century are recorded at 17 to 20¢. Even "Mending the Claw of a Table" at the Annapolis, Maryland, shop of Shaw and Chisholm in 1772 cost a customer only 1s. (16.7¢). Damage of a substantial nature likely resulted in a replaced leg. Tabletops also were the object of repair and adjustment. Mending a "Top of a Table" could vary in cost from the 1s. repair (16.7¢) made by Job E. Townsend at Newport, Rhode Island, to the $1.00 charged in 1829 by E. G. and A. Partridge of Worcester, Massachusetts. More particular in description is Job Townsend Jr's. note of "fasting Down a Top of Table" at Newport and James Linacre's record of "reparing a tabel and Cuting the Corners" at Albany, New York.[71]
Work on table leaves was extensive and involved mending, rehanging, and new fabrication plus installation. Some records are straightforward, as when in the post-Revolutionary years John Paine of Southold, Long Island, mended a table leaf for 25¢ and a "Littel tabel lefe" for 8¢. A table leaf mended by Titus Preston of Wallingford, Connecticut, had to be rehung as well, although the total cost was just 33¢. When new screws were required, Preston charged 4¢ for a set of six, the requisite number for one hinge. A complete new hinge and installation cost 16¢. Problems lie in interpreting the extent of work completed on other table leaves.[72]
Jonathan Herrick's work at "makeing leaf to table" in 1815 for Robert Rantoul, a druggist-merchant of Beverly, Massachusetts, describes a new leaf that replaced a damaged one. With no other charges recorded, it can be assumed that the cost of the work at $1.40 covered a proper finish on the leaf and hanging. By contrast, a charge made two decades earlier by Hartwell Holmes of Woodstock, Connecticut, for supplying a new table leaf was just 50¢. The cost of a replacement leaf was a direct reflection of its size, material, structural detail, and finish. Terminology equally clear in describing replacement work is John Durand's account at Milford, Connecticut, of "putting a new Leaf on a table." Problems arise when interpreting other phraseology, however, such as "puting leaf to Table," "puting fall to Table," and "hanging a table." Were these new leaves or old ones rehung? Here, cost must be taken into account. Probably very little new work was priced under 25¢. The average cost of fabricating and installing a new leaf, based on almost sixty references, was about $1.00.[73]
One dollar was Moses Parkhurst's charge in 1834 for spending a day making and putting a new leaf on a table for Deacon David Davis at Paxton, Massachusetts. Titus Preston provided more detail about a one-day job he undertook in 1822 at Wallingford, Connecticut. The materials, consisting of "about 3 feet of cherry bord 2s., I pr: butts [hinges] 8d., 14 screws 4d.," cost a total of 3s. (50¢). Preston's charge for "the labor at the table" was 6s. ($1.00). Cherry is mentioned again along with other woods in the leaf-replacement work undertaken by several craft shops. John Paine of Southold, Long Island, made a "table lefe cheretree" in 1786 for 6s. ($1.00). The maple table leaf fabricated by Edward Slead at Dartmouth, Massachusetts, more than a decade later cost his customer somewhat less money at 75¢. A job of making a pine table leaf for 58¢ recorded by Reuben Loomis in the early nineteenth century was bespoke by Rev. Joseph Mix of Suffield, Connecticut.[74]
Several early-nineteenth-century craftsmen recorded the installation of leaves in tables identified by their length. At Charlton, Massachusetts, Chapman Lee provided a "New Leaf" for a three-foot table and finished the job by varnishing the entire structure. Two New Hampshire craftsmen, James Chase of Gilmanton and True Currier of Deerfield, made new leaves for four-foot tables. The broad price range for the replacement work in the three tables, 75¢ to $3.25 for the varnished example, describes considerable variety in wood choice. The number of table leaves replaced by furniture makers for customers may have equaled that of all replaced tops, legs (and their metal accessories), and drawers combined.[75]
In replacing a tabletop, craftsmen sometimes found that other tasks were necessary: replacing a drawer or adding a drawer lock; mending a frame or installing new rails; painting a new top or coating an entire table. Tops are identified for large and small tables on occasion; wood selection noted includes mahogany, pine, and maple. In one account entry dated in 1793, Job E. Townsend, of Newport, Rhode Island, recorded a special arrangement with a customer: "To a Mapol Table and he found an old Top."[76]
With specifics such as size and material often unknown, the cost of making and installing a new tabletop is difficult to access. Nathaniel Kinsman of Gloucester, Massachusetts, and Samuel Wayne of Philadelphia made and attached new tabletops for as little as 42¢ to 44¢. Job E. Townsend of Newport priced a "Top to a Small Table" at 50¢. A mahogany tabletop could vary in cost from £1 ($3.34) to as much as £6 ($20.00). Even the utilitarian pine top was subject to a substantial range in price. Samuel Walton made a pine tabletop in 1773 for Joshua Humphries, a Philadelphia shipbuilder, charging 10s. ($1.67). At New York several decades later Nicholas Low paid Jacob Brouwer £2.8 ($8.00) for "a large pine table top."[77]
Craftsmen replaced single legs in common tables for as little as 25¢, the charge made in 1837 by Paul Jenkins at Kennebunk, Maine, for "reparing tabel 1 new Leg." Replacing two legs at one time could be cheaper per unit under certain circumstances because basic table disassembly was the same whether repairing one or more legs. Silas Cheney of Litchfield, Connecticut, charged a customer thirty-eight cents in 1805 for "puting 2 lags to table." Robert Crage provided some insight into leg form at Leicester, Massachusetts, in 1757-1758, when he identified "turning" as a fabrication method. His charge was about 50¢ per leg, which presumably included framing. A customer of Job E. Townsend's at Newport, Rhode Island, paid twice that price in 1785 for "mending a Table With a New Leg mohogony." Walter Nichols undertook more radical work for the local Senter family five years later, when he repaired two legs and replaced several others in a pair of mahogany tables.[78]
At times craftsmen substituted the word "foot" for "leg." An early instance of its use occurs in the accounts of Samuel McCall Sr. of Philadelphia, who paid the joiner Daniel Swan £1 ($3.34) in 1745 for "making a foot to ye Table." The replacement cost suggests a carved walnut example. The same term was still current years later in 1796, when St. George Tucker of Williamsburg, Virginia, employed Charles Hyland to put a new foot on a table of more modest construction, judging by the 4s. (67¢) cost of the repair. Casters appeared on table legs in some numbers by the start of the nineteenth century. Some were part of the original construction, others were added later for convenience, as recorded at New Haven, Connecticut, in 1844 by Howard Smith, who placed casters on a client's table at a charge of $1.37. Occasionally, minor repairs were in order, as when Walsh and Egerton of New York supplied Nicholas Low with "A new wheel for Castor of table."[79]
More often than not, the replacement of a drawer was the occasion for more extensive work on a table. In the pre-Revolutionary years Joseph Symonds of Salem, Massachusetts, and Job Townsend Jr. of Newport, Rhode Island, both recorded a job of replacing a drawer and a tabletop. At the turn of the century coloring a customer's table accompanied drawer-making in the shops of Ezekiel Smith at Taunton, Massachusetts, and Oliver Avery at North Stonington, Connecticut. One of the most extensive jobs recorded is that undertaken in 1826 by James Gere of Groton, Connecticut, for a client in Preston, some fifteen miles distant: "To making Leaf, Draw &c painting & Varnishing Table @ 9 / $1.50." Transporting the table to and from Gere's shop was the customer's responsibility.[80]
Original surfaces on tables often were renewed or refurbished during the lifetime of the first owner. Frequently, a new surface coating was preceded by surface preparation, identified in craftsmen's accounts as "planing," "dressing," "smoothing," "scraping," or "cleaning." The first three words—planing, dressing, and smoothing—describe the same process, that of making a wood surface level, or smooth. Most shops, regardless of geographic location, favored the term "planing," although whatever the word selection, its use usually was consistent within a shop. A rare exception occurs in the records of Job E. Townsend of Newport, Rhode Island. In a ledger entry dated January 26, 1798, under the account of John Taylor, Townsend used his standard term: "To Plaining an old Table." The initial record of this charge in his daybook reads differently: "To Smoothing an old Table." The charge was 3s. (50¢).[81]
Frequently, the process of planing a tabletop, a leaf, or dual surfaces was followed by coating the smoothed areas, if not the entire table, in some manner. Craftsmen often applied stain, sometimes alone, sometimes followed by varnish. Abner Taylor planed and stained a table in 1810 at Lee, Massachusetts, for 34¢. When Jeduthern Avery planed, stained, and varnished a table a few years later at Bolton-Coventry, Connecticut, his charge was slightly higher at 50¢. Other craftsmen described more particular jobs. At New Lisbon, New York, Allen Holcomb recorded work for a customer in 1824 that included "Dressing over Staining & varnishing A Curlmaple table." A large job, undertaken at East Granby, Connecticut, in 1817 by Oliver Moore, involved three tables from one household, which the cabinetmaker planed, stained, and varnished. The work was preceded by "mending one table, Glewing leaf, fixing lock and &c." Some references describe planing and varnishing a table without staining the surfaces. After planing a large table in 1817 at Litchfield, Silas Cheney completed the work by "varnishing [the table] twise." The entire job cost $1.25.[82]
In lieu of varnishing, some householders elected to have their tables polished after the surface was planed, although the materials used for this finish are not specified. At New York in 1738 Joshua Delaplaine recorded "planing over & polishing a Small table." The craftsman's charge of 6s. at this early date suggests the work may have taken longer than a day to complete. Late in the century Pennell Beale of Philadelphia planed and polished "a Large Table" for General Henry Knox, who served as secretary of war in the new federal government, then located in the city. Furniture craftsmen in New England also renewed their share of tables for customers. For example, in the absence of William Greene from Newport, Rhode Island, in 1787, his fellow merchant, Christopher Champlin, looked after the needs of Greene's family. On one occasion Champlin engaged the shop of Stephen and Thomas Goddard to smooth and polish two large tables for Mrs. Greene.[83]
Planing and oiling appears to have been an infrequent option among householders. Silas Cheney planed and oiled a table for 50¢ in 1819 at Litchfield, Connecticut. Some years earlier he oiled another table after scraping the surface. Other options for scraped tables include staining, as recorded by Job E. Townsend at Newport, and painting, noted by True Currier in his accounts at Deerfield, New Hampshire. The most popular coating among householders who chose to have their tables scraped was varnish. Two Connecticut craftsmen named mahogany as the wood of tables refinished in this manner in the 1820s and 1830s. Philemon Robbins scraped and varnished a mahogany table at Hartford. Near the coast at Essex, Elisha Harlow Holmes charged a customer $2.50 to scrape and varnish two mahogany tables, 50¢ more than the client paid for a new trundle bedstead from the shop.[84]
The term "cleaning" or "cleaning off," in reference to restoring a surface, may have several meanings. It could refer simply to cleansing a surface of soil, or it may identify more vigorous activity, such as scraping a surface or smoothing it with a light abrasive. Two shops, those of Fenwick Lyell at Middletown, New Jersey, and Moyers and Rich at Wytheville, Virginia, specifically identified cleaning off and polishing tabletops in the early nineteenth century. Cabinetmaker Jacob Brouwer was asked to clean and polish a table in the household of New York merchant Nicholas Low on several occasions at the turn of the century. The cost varied from 4 to 6s. (67¢ to $1.00), the higher figure similar to Brouwer's charge for putting up three bedsteads in the same household.[85]
In this survey about 69 percent of the tables that received some type of new surface coating were refinished without having the surface first smoothed with hand tools, as described. Six basic surface materials are recorded, whether used alone or in combination with one or more of the other materials. These are ranked from most to least requested: polish, 26.4 percent; varnish, 25.8 percent; stain, 16.6 percent; paint, 16 percent; color, 13.5 percent, and oil, 1.8 percent. "Oiling" and "polishing" a table may describe the same process. As a surface coating on tables, only color, a combination of size and pigment, has yet to be described.
Coloring household furniture in the eighteenth century was an option from an early date. On December 20, 1726, Joseph Brown Jr. of Newbury, Massachusetts, charged Benjamin Morse for "culering & varnishing a table." An average price for coloring a table without further work was 3 to 4s., and, when identified, the form is described as small, little, oval, or round. Lemuel Tobey of Dartmouth-New Bedford named another option when he spent about half a day in 1798 "Cullering and Pollishing [a] Table" for a customer. Other craftsmen carried out somewhat more extensive work when coloring a table, recording the replacement of a table leaf or a drawer.[86]
Craftsmen occasionally noted alterations that changed the structure and/or physical appearance of a table. An early alteration was one undertaken at Philadelphia by Francis Trumble for merchant Nathaniel Allen: "By mending & altring 2 Wallnut tables 10/, hinges & Screws 13/," making a total of £1.3. The substantial cost of the new hardware for the tables, more than that for the repairs and alteration, invites speculation. It appears that all four leaves were rehung, using twelve new hinges and seventy-two screws. This supposition, in turn, suggests that the "mending" occurred at the points where the old hardware was attached to the leaves and tabletops. The damage at the hinge sites appears to have severely compromised the inside edge of one or more leaves, prompting Trumble to suggest shortening, or altering, the leaves by cutting away the damaged wood at the hinge sites and rehanging. To shorten the table leaves in this manner, the original shape had to have been rectangular. Trumble's work for Allen extended over a period of several years and helped to offset some of the annual cost of renting his house from the merchant.[87]
Another alteration, one priced at 9s. and carried out at the end of the century for the household of St. George Tucker at Williamsburg, Virginia, by Charles Hyland, required a day and a half or more of the craftsman's time. The work, described as "altering a four foot mehogany table, cutting of it shorter and cleaning of it of[f] and a new joint," suggests a long rectangular frame with a fixed top and no leaves, given the cost of the job. Removing and shortening the top was minor compared to shortening the side framing pieces by disassembling one end and working two new mortise-and-tenon joints to reattach the legs to the shortened frame. Elisha Harlow Holmes of Essex, Connecticut, had an easier job when he billed Elias Redfield in 1826 for "Rounding table ends at his house." Two other craftsmen working in the early nineteenth century were requested by clients to produce two tables from one large one. At Middletown, New Jersey, Fenwick Lyell described the work as "altering a Table into two" and charged £1.2 ($3.67). Elizur Barnes, working at Middletown, Connecticut, recorded "making 2 tables out of one" for $1.25.[88]
Tea Tables
As a collective body, the repaired tables identified in craftsmen's records by particular function are far fewer in number than the mass of general tables listed without further description. This anonymity often carries over to the nature of repairs, even in named tables. For example, in reviewing references to tea tables, more than half lack details of the actual repair work. Fortunately, the snippets of information in the remaining material appear to represent a reasonable sampling of the range and scope of work carried out on this specialized form (fig. 10). The average cost of unidentified tea-table repairs was 47¢ per job, although two-thirds of the work actually cost householders 34¢ or less and required one-third or less of a craftsman's workday to complete.
Mahogany is the only wood of the tea table identified in repair work, and the references are few. The work could cost as little as 1s. 6d. (25¢), the fee Samuel Williams charged prominent Philadelphia merchant Michael Gratz for "Glewing 2 Joints & mending a Mohogony teatable," or as much as $1.00, which likely represented a full day's work on the part of the furniture craftsman. Repairs to or replacement of a tabletop are named more than other tasks in tea-table work. Lemuel Tobey of Dartmouth, Massachusetts, supplied a "Tea Table Top" at 4s. (67¢) in 1785 to "Mr Dillingham, Blacksmith." Thirteen years later the craftsman made a "Tea Table Top and Draw[er]" for another customer and charged him 9s. ($1.50). The term "tee table Leafe" used in 1757 by Peter Emerson of Reading, Massachusetts, may also identify a tabletop.[89]
An early reference of 1742/43 to "making a new molding to a tea table" at the New York shop of Joseph Delaplaine may describe a rectangular rather than a circular table, one with four legs rather than a single pillar on a tripod base. Late in the century Job Danforth of Providence recorded "putting frame on China Table," a reference that also appears to identify a rectangular tea table, one with a gallery around the edges of the top. There is less ambiguity about Titus Preston's work at Wallingford, Connecticut, in 1801, when he put "a dead head to a tea table." This long, slender block of wood with deeply chamfered ends mounted on the underside of a tabletop secured the top to a central pillar. Preston recorded another type of repair a dozen years later, described as "fastning a leg to a tea table." Job E. Townsend of Newport, Rhode Island, went one step further in "Putting a New Leg to a Tea Table." With or without structural repairs to the body, tea-table surfaces periodically required attention. Undoubtedly, some tables were painted. Others were stained, planed and stained, or, in the case of a table refurbished at Middletown, Connecticut, by Elizur Barnes, planed, stained, and varnished.[90]
Tea-table hardware was the concern of patrons of other woodworking shops from New England to the South. New "ketches" were supplied by Samuel Cheever at Salem, Massachusetts, to Colonel John Hawthorne and by Shaw and Chisholm at Annapolis, Maryland, to James Brice, Esq. Thomas Affleck's reference to a "Tea Table lock" at Philadelphia may describe the same hardware. Patrons of other cabinetmaking establishments requested casters to provide ease in moving tea tables. Charles Norris of Philadelphia acquired "A Set of new Castors" in 1764 when having his table "mended" by Samuel Matthews. A single replacement caster was all that St. George Tucker required of John Hockaday at Williamsburg, Virginia, after the turn of the century.[91]
Dining Tables
Craftsmen enjoyed a relatively brisk business in dining-table repairs. As expected, the average cost of the many anonymous repair jobs listed is significantly higher at 73¢ than the average unidentified tea-table repair. A rare descriptive entry for general mending in the accounts of David Evans provides some insight on work versus cost at this Philadelphia shop in 1776: "To making a Joint to a Dining Table 1/6, To a hinge for D[itt]o 1/0," the total being 2s. 6d. (42¢). What exactly did the customer, John Biddle, get for his 42¢? Evans's labor charge at 1s. 6d. was equal to about a quarter of a day's pay, and the additional shilling bought one hinge. The time devoted to the job indicates that Evans did more than replace a broken hinge with a new one. Because of damage at the original hinge site, the craftsman made a new joint by paring away wood on the undersurface of the stationary top and the leaf, ensuring that the newly installed hinge would lie flush with the wood.[92]
Several accounts identify the wood of a table under repair. In 1822 in rural Cooperstown, New York, Miles Benjamin mended a cherry dining table. Walnut tables appear to have been favored at Philadelphia in the mid- to late eighteenth century, as three are named in accounts. One was almost new when repaired. On February 23, 1754, John Elliott Sr. completed a "Square Walnut Dineing table" for merchant Edward Shippen Jr., whom he charged £2.15. The table was back in Elliott's shop less than a week later, on March 1, for "Mending and working over a new Square Dineing table" at an additional charge of 12s. 6d. What had happened? Because carrying or carting furniture to and from a woodworker's shop was the responsibility of the customer, it appears that some mishap occurred between Elliott's shop and Shippen's house. Mahogany is named in a New York account of 1783, when Jonathan Cowdrey repaired a dining table described as "large" for Chancellor Robert R. Livingston. Considerably less pretentious was the table repaired and painted "Mehogany" color two decades later at Bordentown, New Jersey, by John Sager.[93]
Constant use of the dining table in the home and the size and weight of the fall leaves necessitated that some leaves would require replacement from time to time. When Jacob Sass undertook this work at Charleston, South Carolina, in 1805, he charged $6.00 for a single leaf. The table may well have been made of mahogany, although of modest size. Two years later at Middletown, New Jersey, Fenwick Lyell charged a customer the enormous sum of $18.00 for "Puting leaves to a Large Dining Table," which almost certainly was made of mahogany. Periodically a table leg required attention. Elisha Harlow Holmes repaired a "Dining table new leg two butts" (hinges) in 1829 at Essex, Connecticut. An unusual occurrence was William Turner's job of "Repairing a pillar & Claw Dining Table" in 1817 for New York merchant Nicholas Low. The table appears to have been part of a purchase Low made in 1808 from Robert McConachy described as "a Sett Pillar & Claw Dining tables." The purchase price of $190.00 suggests the tables were richly carved and perhaps gilded.[94]
More than the introduction of replacement parts, dining tables required renewed and refurbished surfaces. Planing, smoothing, dressing, or scraping was followed by stain, varnish, and polish, sometimes alone, sometimes in combination. In June 1814 Thomas Boynton of Windsor, Vermont, took on a job for William Leverett that included scraping and varnishing two dining tables, one described as circular. Boynton also made several new pieces of furniture for Leverett at that time, and at the end of the account entry he penned a rather uncommon note: "all mahogany varnished 4 times." Rarely did furniture receive more than two coats of varnish, and one coat was still more common. At Newport, Rhode Island, Job E. Townsend undertook special work of a different type in 1801 for Samuel Vaughn. After mending, staining, and polishing a dining table, he built "Two Sircler End Tables" to complement the main dining frame (fig. 11), all at a cost of £3 ($10.00). Vaughn's was not the only request for this dining enhancement. In the same year Dr. John Rodgers of New York acquired "a pair of ends for a table" for his house in Cortlandt Street. General Moses Porter of Boston may already have owned the two end tables he had repaired by Nathaniel Bryant two decades later.[95]
Breakfast, or Pembroke, Tables
Small tables for the purpose of individual or private dining were in use prior to the eighteenth century in Europe, although it was almost the mid-eighteenth century before the small table became a reasonably common household form and one associated particularly with the breakfast meal (fig. 12). Thomas Chippendale illustrated only two designs for "Breakfast Tables" in the three editions of his Director, published between 1754 and 1762. A purchase for the English royal household in 1765 describes the structural features that became associated with the form: "a good mahogany 2 Flap Breakfast Table with a Drawer on Brass Casters." Toward the end of the century the form became known as a "Pembroke table," a term used by Thomas Sheraton in his Drawing-Book (1793) and by George Hepplewhite in his Guide (1794). Concerning the shape of the tabletop, Sheraton noted that "the long square and the oval are the most fashionable." Sheraton linked the name "Pembroke" with a lady who was an early owner of one of the small tables.[96]
References to repair work on the small dining frame known both as a breakfast and a Pembroke table in America first appear in this study under dates in the late eighteenth century. The earliest is 1791, when General Henry Knox engaged Pennell Beale of Philadelphia to plane and polish "4 Breakfast Tables @ 3/9 pr Table." The latest reference is 1830, with the bulk of material falling between 1791 and 1816. Although the breakfast/Pembroke-table sample in this study is relatively small, it may be of sufficient size to identify some regional preferences in the use of these terms. Craftsmen in Connecticut, New York City, New Jersey, and Philadelphia were consistent in their choice of "breakfast table," just as woodworkers in Salem, Massachusetts, Newport, Rhode Island, and Williamsburg, Virginia, preferred "Pembroke table."[97]
Structural repairs to the breakfast/Pembroke table focus on two elements, legs and tops. William Reger of Germantown, near Philadelphia, put a new leg in a table in 1816 for Charles Wistar. At New York Jacob Brouwer went a step further in 1802, when "Repairing a breakfast table with new legs & stretchers." It was the tabletop, however, that required the most attention. The work could vary from simply "screwing on the top of a pembroke Table," as recorded in 1795 by Rookesby Roberts at Williamsburg, Virginia, to making a new top. On this subject the records of Job E. Townsend of Newport, Rhode Island, are particularly comprehensive because they also shed light on materials. Two account entries dating to 1804 are noteworthy. Townsend charged Benedict Smith 13s. 6d. for "Making a New Birch top and staining the frame of a Pembroke Table." When Henry Freeborn paid 18s. for his work, the charge reflected the greater status of his choice of wood: "To a New Top To a Cherry Pembroke Table."[98]
Townsend's records for 1799 to 1801 also contain insights on new work that provide a basis for cost comparison. A plain cherry Pembroke table from the shop cost £2.2 (42s.). If the small frame was embellished with stringing, the charge was £2.8 (48s.). The 6s. difference between the two tables describes an additional day's labor to lay in the narrow threads of contrasting wood. The price of a mahogany table with stringing was £3 (60s.). By contrast, a householder could purchase a plain maple Pembroke table from Townsend for as little as 15s. Reuben Loomis identified "a breakfast table with a drawr" in 1824, when filling an order at Suffield, Connecticut.[99]
Surface refurbishing recorded for the breakfast/Pembroke table is not unlike that described for the dining table. Planing, oiling, and varnishing were options, either alone or in combination. Captain John Derby of Salem, Massachusetts, engaged Robert Cowan in 1803 to varnish and polish "a pembroke Table (made by Sanderson)," identifying either Elijah or Jacob, the entrepreneurial brothers who made and brokered quantities of furniture for exportation (fig. 12). Painting was another option. This was the choice in 1805 of a customer at John Sager's shop in Bordentown, New Jersey.[100]
Dressing Tables
The furniture form for the chamber, or bedroom, that functioned as a center for personal grooming from the late seventeenth century until well into the nineteenth century is termed in this study either a "dressing table" or a "toilet table" (also "toyelite," "twilite"). Whether craftsmen and customers made a distinction in using these terms is unclear. The word "dressing" is almost 21/2 times as common as "toilet" in the present sample, and it occurs in records at an earlier date. Joshua Delaplaine of New York City billed Jane Gilbert 10s. in 1737 for "raising a dressing table with a new draw[er] & furniture" (hardware). The term "raise," as used here, may describe straightforward replacement work or a new feature designed to enhance the usefulness of the furniture. First mention of the toilet table in this study is January 21, 1775, when William Savery of Philadelphia completed a "Top to a toilet table" for Joseph Pemberton. Information on repair costs is fragmentary, although it appears that charges for mending a dressing table usually were higher than those for a toilet table.[101]
Most dressing tables have one or two tiers of drawers in the frame (fig. 13). A few tables have interiors fitted with compartments and, on occasion, an easel-style dressing glass in a drawer. Most of the dressing tables in this sample appear to have been of simple structure, with a few exceptions. One exception may be the "Dressing Table with Glass" repaired by Robert C. Scadin of Cooperstown, New York, in 1830 at a charge of $6.00 to the owner. Repairs carried out by Elizur Barnes at Middletown, Connecticut, several years earlier were modest by comparison. He charged one patron 25¢ for "Easing Draws to 2 Dressing tables at house." Because house calls were unusual in the cabinet trade, Barnes may have completed the work when in the vicinity on other business. On another occasion a customer paid Barnes $1.25 for "mending Dressing table Legg & painting D[itt]o." An early and unusual repair noted by Solomon Fussell of Philadelphia in 1741 was turning a "Ball for a Dressing Table." The 4¢ "ornament" for an earlier-style table likely replaced a lost or damaged pendent drop in the case frame or a finial at the center crossing of a pair of curvilinear stretchers.[102]
On occasion craftsmen noted replacing the entire top of either a dressing table or a toilet table. The cost usually was low, even when Job E. Townsend of Newport, Rhode Island, recorded "Making a New top and Splicing the legs Toy light" (for a toilet table). The 50¢ charge indicates the top was made of common wood and probably painted. Paint also was current for the dressing table. Allen Holcomb's charge of 50¢ in 1827 at New Lisbon, New York, describes embellishment he added to painted furniture: "Striping a wash stand and Dress[ing] table." Stain, color, and varnish were other surface options. Perhaps the table Townsend "cover[ed] . . . with oil Cloth" to protect the surface was for use in the toilet in the household of David Stephens, the client.[103]
If a chamber table was not supplied with a fitted drawer, a householder could purchase a dressing box to place on the top. Many boxes were framed with an accompanying looking glass. At times these accessories also required maintenance. When in Philadelphia during the 1790s, General Henry Knox sought the services of Pennell Beale and Isaac Ashton for this work on several occasions. One request to Ashton was for a "Kea for the Dressing Box & mending the Glass fraim." At Newport Job E. Townsend mended a "Shaving Glass," identifying another function filled by dressing furniture. Surfaces periodically needed attention. Mrs. John Francis of Philadelphia paid Richard Alexander the tidy sum of $2.50 in 1817 for "Pollishing in Varnish a Dressing box."[104]
Card Tables
The earliest repaired card tables recorded in this study were located in urban settings and date to the 1770s, identifying them as cabriole-style furniture (fig. 14). David Evans of Philadelphia made repairs to John Biddle's table, which required new hinges. At Salem, Massachusetts, the estate of Nathaniel Gould charged merchant Elias Hasket Derby 6s. for unspecified card-table repairs that, based on the cost, likely had required a day to complete. Between 1780 and 1794 craftsmen repaired eight other pre-federal tables, one described as mahogany, whose owners resided in urban or semiurban centers, including Newburyport, Massachusetts, New York City, Philadelphia, Freehold, New Jersey, and Williamsburg, Virginia.[105]
Repair work on card tables often reflects work carried out on other table forms. For example, a customer at Freehold, New Jersey, asked Alexander Low to hinge a card table. David Evans of Philadelphia and Fenwick Lyell of Middletown, New Jersey, each framed a new leg in a card table. Eliakim Prindle of Salem, Massachusetts, requested Benjamin Ellery Jr. to put a new top on his table. Other structural repairs include the "new lath" (braces for the frame) that Jacob Brouwer of New York fitted into each of a pair of tables owned by Nicholas Low. The merchant also engaged Brouwer to install "new baze" on the top of a card table. Baize, a felted woolen cloth, was dyed green or brown. An unusual request made in 1829 by a customer of Robert C. Scadin at Cooperstown, New York, was for "pillers & Claws to Card Tables," with sets of casters for the feet. The total bill was $17.50. Without further information, it would appear that the customer updated older tops with new bases. Scadin's price for a new stand or a new tea table in the pillar-and-claw style was $25.00. Cabinetmakers also responded to customers' requests for surface refinishing by planing or scraping their card tables followed by stain, varnish, or polish. A customer of George Short at Newburyport, Massachusetts, was credited $1.50 for painting two card tables.[106]
Table games, aside from those employing cards, had some currency in the American household. Several records cite repairs to backgammon tables. Earliest is a record in the accounts of Benjamin Randolph of Philadelphia, who in 1767 billed Colonel George Croghan, Indian trader, agent, and land speculator, for "Mending 2 Backgammon Tables" at a cost of £1. Job Townsend Jr. and his son Job E. Townsend had similar calls for repair work between 1768 and 1785 at Newport, Rhode Island. Although the game of backgammon was available in board form, tables appear to have been preferred in some quarters. Young Elizabeth Bleecker McDonald of New York noted in her diary on January 11, 1802, that Peter Stuyvesant, one of a circle of friends she and her husband entertained, had made her a present of "a handsome Back gammon table." Four days later she noted: "Peter Stuyvesant was here—he and I sat playing Back Gammon till near twelve o'clock."[107]
Kitchen Tables
Whereas Philemon Robbins of Hartford, Connecticut, sold a new kitchen table for $1.75 in 1834, a general survey of table repairs indicates that some tables when new sold for considerably more. Some kitchen tables appear to have had stationary tops; others had one or more fall leaves. The cost of general repairs varied from 25¢ to almost $1.00. Repairs made with new parts are more revealing. Amos Denison Allen of Windham, Connecticut, the only craftsman to name a table material, supplied a patron with "1 citchen table leaf pine" and charged him $1.84 for the work. Some leaves supplied by other craftsmen were almost as expensive; others were about half the price, indicating that table size and material varied appreciably. Joseph Griswold of Buckland, Massachusetts, and David Haven of Framingham supplied customers with both a new leaf and a drawer for their kitchen tables, again at varied pricing. In "putting a Top & Draw to a Citchen Table" for $2.25 in 1803, Job Danforth of Providence appears to have replaced a stationary top. Another fixed top required "Smoothing & puting on Part kitche[n] table top" ten years later at the Litchfield, Connecticut, shop of Silas Cheney.[108]
Householders selected a suitable table finish from several options. At Glastonbury, Connecticut, in 1801, George Talcott paid Solomon Cole $1.67 for a "Citchen table leaf & staining frame." Stain followed by varnish was the choice of other householders. Following repair work on his kitchen table, David Crage of Charlton, Massachusetts, directed Chapman Lee to coat the surface with paint. Paint again was deemed a suitable finish for utilitarian furniture when Christian M. Nestell of Providence repaired and painted a "large wash Table" for Richard W. Greene, Esq.[109]
Tables of Special Note
Several tables of opulent feature from affluent households invite special notice because notes on their repair are uncommon in craftsmen's or clients' accounts. On March 10, 1795, Mathurin Tardy of New York received £10 ($33.40) from Chancellor Robert R. Livingston "for Mending and Polishing two Marble Tables." Equally handsome furniture stood in the home of Stephen Girard at Philadelphia in 1824, when the merchant paid William Sherman $20.00 to regild and varnish a "Carved Table." Girard again required Sherman's services three years later to mend a "Gilt Table."[110]
Stands and Stand Tables
Craftsmen's records identify a large group of small tables of varied feature as stands or stand tables. Some stands filled general household needs, while others served specialized functions. A large body of material relating to this form addresses repair work of a general nature without identifying function or feature. In summarizing data of a more specific type, legs and tops appear to have required the most attention, whether for repair or replacement. New leaves or screws for leaves are noted, and craftsmen installed new or replacement locks on box-style stands. Mahogany is named occasionally as the construction wood; cherry is mentioned once. Surface preparation and finish run the gamut. Surfaces were planed, smoothed, scraped, and cleaned. Finishes include stain, varnish, paint, oil, polish, and wax.
Candlestands and Light Stands
A candlestand in the form of a small table (fig. 15) was relatively uncommon in America before the 1740s, and the form may have remained a rarity in rural areas for several decades longer. When Abraham David of Southold on eastern Long Island ordered half a dozen out-of-fashion cane-back chairs in 1761, he also directed John Paine "to mack a stand to set a candle on." The wording suggests some unfamiliarity with the form. Only two years later, William Barker, a furniture maker of Providence, where society was considerably more cosmopolitan, was already "mending [a] candle stand" for a client. Toward the end of the century another term for this furniture form came into relatively common use. The earliest "light stand" repair recorded in this study dates to 1788, when Job E. Townsend of Providence produced "a Crose [cross] stick for a Lite Stand," presumably a cleat for the underside of the top. There appears to be little, if any, difference in meaning between the terms "light stand" and "candlestand," although records indicate the word "candlestand" was in more general use.[111]
Most stand repairs cost 50¢ or less. Higher charges reflect work of an extensive nature or the use of costly materials. A review of accounts from the shops of a group of New England craftsmen identifies prices for new stands, ranging from $1.34, possibly for a painted example, to $5.00 for a "mahogany turn up" stand. The review also indicates that 80 percent of the stands purchased by householders cost $2.00 or less. A "second hand lightstand" from the shop of True Currier at Deerfield, New Hampshire, could be acquired for 58¢. In reviewing repairs, two woods are named in the general sample, mahogany and cherry, and each just once. The reference to the cherry stand actually identifies another, somewhat unusual, circumstance. In 1813 Oliver Moore of East Granby, Connecticut, accommodated Phineas Newton Jr. by "turning a Candle stand post" for 25¢ and then providing "Cherry pieces for leggs" at 6¢. Obviously, Newton planned to build his own candlestand, highlighting a craftsman-customer arrangement repeated from time to time in other shops.[112]
A replacement candlestand or light-stand top to be finished in varnish, other than one of mahogany, cost about 50¢ at either a rural or urban shop. Luke Houghton of Barre, Massachusetts, and Isaac Vose of Boston noted these charges in their accounts. Silas Cheney's "Bord for top of Candle Stand" cost 20¢ and likely received a coat of paint at his shop in Litchfield, Connecticut. The "leaf" for a candlestand listed in craftsmen's accounts appears to have been an alternative term for a top. Use of the term was widespread—from the accounts of George Landon in Erie, Pennsylvania, to those of Allen Holcomb in New Lisbon, New York, and William Mather in Whately, Massachusetts.[113]
Because of its design, the candlestand, or light stand, was vulnerable to tipping over, sometimes resulting in damage to the pillar. Philip Deland recorded mending a pillar in 1819 at his shop in West Brookfield, Massachusetts. True Currier's description of this construction element at Deerfield, New Hampshire, was "light stand body." Frequently, damage to the pillar was sufficient that replacement was necessary, leading craftsmen, including Samuel Douglas of near Canton, Connecticut, to note, "repairing Candle Stand made new pillar." Douglas's charge of 67¢ was half the price of a new stand. James Gere of Groton identified turning as the usual method of fabricating the pillar. Most vulnerable of all were the legs. Fortunately, several accounts contain more than the basic information common to most records. Daniel Trotter of Philadelphia described "putting a new Claw foot to a Stand" at a charge of 5s. (84¢) in 1788, three years following Townsend Goddard's record of "makeing a Leg to Stand, paw foot" at Newport, Rhode Island, for merchant Christopher Champlin. Silas Cheney carried out more extensive work at Litchfield, Connecticut, in the early nineteenth century, when Tapping Reeve, Esq., bespoke a job of "putting 3 Lags to mehogeny Candlestand and varnishing the same for O Woolcot" (probably Oliver Wolcott). The charge was 8s. ($1.34).[114]
Plain varnish was the common finish of the candlestand. Occasionally a craftsman planed and stained the wood first. Other options included applying a coat of paint or color. Hartwell Holmes of Woodstock, Connecticut, probably spent no more than one-twelfth of a day (less than one hour) painting a candlestand in 1806, since his charge was just 8¢. Edward Slead's fee for "colouring and pollishing one candle stand" in 1798 at Dartmouth, Massachusetts, was only slightly more at 12 1/2 cents.[115]
Workstables and Work Stands
The lady's worktable, first produced in Paris circa 1750, was current in England within a few years. Thomas Sheraton illustrated two designs for worktables in the 1793, or first, edition of his Drawing-Book, and production of this form in America may have begun before the close of the century (fig. 16). As early as 1804 a client brought a worktable to the shop of Fenwick Lyell at Middletown, New Jersey, a community lying within the sphere of New York influence, to be varnished and fitted with casters. The charge of 18s. ($3.00) for the work was substantial, perhaps reflecting the quality of the table, which could have been of English or American construction. The next reference, which dates to 1811, leaves little doubt that American furniture was the subject. On August 7 Captain Reuben S. Randall brought two work tables for repair to the shop of Langley Boardman in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. These tables appear to have been the "two work tables" Randall bought from Boardman earlier in the year on January 26 for the sum of $18.00.[116]
Whereas "work table" appears to have been the general term in England for the box-style frame with a drawer or drawers used by ladies to store needlework and sewing equipment, American craftsmen and consumers identified the form by either of two names, "work table" or "work stand." Both terms were concurrent and appear to have followed no clear pattern of regional use, although "table" may have been preferred in New York City and Philadelphia. A relatively common call at cabinet shops was for "new triming work Stand & finding knobs," as recorded by Paul Jenkins in 1839 at Kennebunk, Maine. The work cost 50¢ or less. More expensive was "a Set of Casters on a Worktable" for which Richard Alexander of Philadelphia charged $1.25. Alterations occurred from time to time. Thirty-four cents was Elizur Barnes's fee in 1824 for "Lowering workstand & mending Casters" for a customer at Middletown, Connecticut. Some worktables had a cloth bag, or pouch, for storing current needlework or sewing. Whether this accessory was an item in a bill of 1827 from Michael Bouvier of Philadelphia to Stephen Girard is unclear: "To Repairing & furnishing cloth & silk for Tables $20." When renewing the finish of a worktable, furniture craftsmen routinely cleaned, stained, varnished, and/or polished the surface. George Button of Groton, Connecticut, engaged James Gere in 1828 to stain and varnish one of two work stands he brought to the shop; the craftsman painted and ornamented the second stand.[117]
Washstands and Basin Stands
A piece of furniture designed especially for the purpose of washing the hands and body was current in England only about the mid-eighteenth century. Chippendale introduced designs for basin stands with the third edition (1762) of the Director. Early stands have tripod bases with slender, tiered, open skeletal bodies. Designs for stands illustrated by Hepplewhite and Sheraton toward the end of the century include cupboards, drawers, backsplashes, and other conveniences. Most frames are rectangular or triangular. These features and shapes are more in keeping with the stands represented in the repair work described in this study (fig. 17).[118]
Terminology is again a consideration in reviewing repairs made to this specialized stand because craftsmen in America used two names to identify the form—"basin stand" and "wash stand." Basin stand is the less common of the two, although it may have been in use earlier. In 1784 Thomas Affleck, a prominent Philadelphia cabinetmaker who had emigrated from Scotland, repaired a "Bason Stand" for General John Cadwalader, owner of a handsome house in Second Street furnished in an opulent style. Twelve years earlier the first printed furniture price book was published in the city and included among the entries two listings for a "Bason Stand." Materials for the present study indicate this term was also in use in Charleston, South Carolina, New York City, and adjacent Middletown, New Jersey. Otherwise "wash stand" appears to have been the preferred term from New England to the South.[119]
The triangular washstand with rounded front illustrated in figure 17 is identified as a "Corner Basin Stand" in design books. Of this form, Hepplewhite stated, "This is a very useful shape, as it stands in a corner out of the way." Sheraton commented further on the design of the front legs, noting in his Cabinet Dictionary that they were made to "spring forward" to protect the stand from "tumbling over." Another feature here is the two hinged top boards to be raised "to prevent water from spraying the wall." When folded over completely, the boards form a cover for the top well. A convenient shelf for linens supports a central drawer flanked by two sham drawers, and a bottom stretcher provides structural reinforcement for the delicate legs.[120]
Craftsmen's records identify a variety of structural repairs to wash- and basin stands. Fenwick Lyell put "a Top on a Basin Stand" in 1809 at Middletown, New Jersey. A new drawer for a washstand cost a customer 50¢ at the shop of Miles Benjamin in Cooperstown, New York. Benjamin's records indicate that he sold new washstands in a range of prices from $2.25 to $12.00. Retrimming a stand was a regular call at many shops. After making repairs to a washstand, Alexander H. Gilbert of Chester, Connecticut, charged a customer 50¢ for a mahogany knob. The "New Stretcher" installed in a basin stand at Charleston, South Carolina, by Nicholas Silberg in 1799 may have been of triangular form to support turned-out legs of the type in figure 17. Occasionally a craftsman made a quick repair using glue, as indicated in the records of Silas Cheney at Litchfield, Connecticut.[121]
Finishes for wash- and basin stands are divided between varnish and paint. Daniel Dewey of Hartford, Connecticut, scraped three washstands for Daniel Wadsworth in 1829 before applying varnish. Painting records are somewhat more descriptive. Philemon Robbins, another Hartford craftsman, charged a customer 50¢ to paint a washstand yellow; a coat of varnish followed. Fifty cents also was William Beesley's fee at Salem, New Jersey, in 1831 for "painting a wash stand maple." Beesley's charge raises the question of whether the new paint was merely maple color or a grained surface simulating the figure of the wood. At New Lisbon, New York, Allen Holcomb decorated a washstand by introducing "Striping." Sometimes the work was more extensive than indicated in that simple descriptor.[122]
Summary
Although substantive information highlighting furniture repairs and alterations in the late-colonial and federal periods forms only a small part of the related general body of material in craftsmen's records, careful analysis, cost comparison, and even reading between the lines provide further illumination of this important branch of the furniture trade. These avenues of investigation will be continued in part 2, which, as noted, will explore the recorded activity of craftsmen who undertook to repair, refurbish, and, on occasion, alter their patrons' case furniture, looking glasses, and small household and personal items.
