Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) has long been associated with the Campeche chair, a lounging form with a curved, reclined back and a sella curulis base (fig. 1). Decorative arts historians have interpreted the example Jefferson owned as a reflection of his knowledge of classical design sources and his refined taste, in addition to its being an object that provided physical comfort during his later years. Recent research now ties Jefferson to the Campeche chair much earlier than previously thought and suggests that the form held multiple layers of meaning for him. Evidence indicates that he probably became interested in the Campeche chair after the Louisiana Purchase of 1803, when he acquired an example and used it as part of the furnishings in the President’s House during his residency from 1801 to 1809. For Jefferson and his contemporaries, this chair form no longer alluded to its Roman imperial past but served as a reminder of the Louisiana Purchase and Jefferson’s pivotal role in securing the West for the new nation.[1]
The Campeche chair traces its origins back to folding or cross-legged stools used in ancient Egypt and later Greece and Rome. In his History of Rome, Livy indicated that Roman officials had borrowed the sella curulis from their neighbors the Etruscans. An example can be seen on the silver denarius coin illustrated in figure 2. This version of the chair has curule legs situated laterally, with a boss at the intersection, and ball feet. These chairs became such a significant sign of power in the Roman Republic that their use was confined to consuls, praetors, and, eventually, Roman emperors. The sella curulis evolved into an emblem of authority and majesty and can be found on coins, medals, and monuments of the age.[2]
From its Roman origins, the cross-stool retained its function as a symbol of authority in Europe through the Middle Ages and into the Renaissance. One of the best-known survivals is Dagobert’s Throne (fig. 3), once thought to be the throne of King Dagobert I of France (r. 623/29–639). This chair started out as a stool, and a back and armrests were added later in its life. It eventually entered the treasury of the abbey of St.-Denis outside Paris, where Abbot Suger (1081–1155) noted, “We also restored the noble throne of the glorious King Dagobert, on which, as tradition relates, the Frankish kings sat to receive the homage of their nobles after they had assumed power. We did so in recognition of its exalted function and because of the value of the work itself.” The stool remained at St.-Denis until 1791, when the turmoil of the French Revolution led to its removal to the Cabinet of Antiquities and eventually to its current home, the Bibliothèque nationale de France.[3]
During the Renaissance, the curule stool evolved into a chair with a back and attained widespread popularity throughout Europe and Britain. By the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, a variation of the sella curulis known as the sillon da cadera (fig. 4) was widely used in Spain. In addition to having a superstructure of posts, arms, and a low back, the sillon da cadera also had crossed legs oriented to face forward. The Spanish conquistadors brought the sillon da cadera to the New World, and the Campeche chair developed in Mexico from those antecedents. The chair took on the name of the port city of Campeche on the Yucatán Peninsula, which was a primary export center for this form as well as for logwood, a dyewood commonly known as Campeche wood. From Mexico, the Campeche chair made its way to the Spanish territory of Louisiana.[4]
North American chair makers began producing these chairs around 1800. In New Orleans, where the form was in considerable demand, the archetypal Campeche chair has a tall demilune crest, a leather back and seat, flat arms with scrolled terminals, shaped arm supports, a flat front stretcher, and a curule base. The chair illustrated in figure 1 is an early example distinguished by having twelve inlaid stars on its crest. Inlaid crests are relatively common on New Orleans Campeche chairs, but typically the ornament is floral. Although the basic form of the New Orleans Campeche chair remained relatively unchanged, later examples often have turned arm supports and stretchers and occasionally finials with plinths (fig. 5).[5]
It is well documented that a New Orleans Campeche chair was part of the eclectic furnishings with which Thomas Jefferson (fig. 6) surrounded himself, especially during his lengthy retirement at Monticello (fig. 7) and Poplar Forest (fig. 8). In the summer of 1819, when the seventy-six-year-old Jefferson was ill at Poplar Forest, he asked his daughter Martha Jefferson Randolph (1772–1836) to send him a Campeche chair, because “While too weak to set up the whole day, and afraid to increase the weakness by lying down, I longed for a Siesta chair which would have admitted the medium position. I must therefore pray you send by Henry the one made by Johnny Hemings.” Forty years later, Jefferson’s granddaughter Ellen Randolph Coolidge (1796–1876) recalled that chair’s location in Monticello, noting, “In the large Parlour, with it’s parquetted floor, stood the Campeachy chair, made of goat skin, sent to him from New Orleans, where, in the shady twilight, I was used to seeing him resting.” Indeed, Ellen not only observed his rest but was one of his favorite evening companions. Shortly after Ellen’s marriage in 1825, her sister Virginia Randolph Trist (1801–1882) wrote: “Grandpapa’s health is steadily improving, but I fear he misses you sadly every evening when he takes his seat in one of the campeachy chairs, & he looks so solitary & the empty chair on the opposite side of the door is such a melancholy sight to us all, that one or the other of us is sure to go to occupy it.” Virginia’s letter is evidence that two Campeche chairs were in the parlor, placed on either side of the door that led to the west portico and the lawn beyond (fig. 9). This proximity to the door, coupled with their relatively lightweight frames, meant that these Campeche chairs could also have been used outdoors. None of the family documents mentions what drew Jefferson to this form, but recent research indicates that his association with the chairs began during his presidency and that he most likely sought them out because of their unique ties to New Orleans and the Louisiana Territory.[6]
After being sworn in as president in March 1801, Thomas Jefferson (fig. 10) faced the troubling issue of France and Spain using the Louisiana Territory as a colonial pawn and the possibility that these imperial powers would block American trade into the port of New Orleans. To address this concern, President Jefferson authorized Robert Livingston (1746–1813), United States minister to France, and envoy James Monroe (1758–1831) to negotiate the purchase of what was known as the Isle of Orleans and part of West Florida from France. In April 1803, to the astonishment of these diplomats, Napoleon Bonaparte (1769–1821) offered to sell the whole of the Louisiana Territory, an area far larger and more expensive than originally proposed. Livingston and Monroe swiftly agreed to the $15,000,000 price, however, because the advantages for the United States were too numerous to deny. In addition to gaining control of New Orleans, which was Jefferson’s original intent, the purchase would double the size of the United States at a cost of less than 3¢ per acre. Charles Talleyrand-Périgord (1754–1838), Napoleon’s minister of foreign affairs, told Livingston, “You have made a noble bargain for yourselves, and I suppose you will make the most of it.”[7]
On July 3, 1803, Jefferson received word that the treaty had been signed in Paris on April 30, 1803. The American public learned the news on July 4, a propitious day associated with Jefferson as author of the Declaration of Independence. His friend Caspar Wistar (1761–1818) recorded that Jefferson and his contacts considered the Louisiana Purchase “the most important & beneficial transaction which has occurred since the declaration of Independence, & next to it, most like to influence and regulate the destinies of our Country.” France handed New Orleans over on December 20, 1803, with word reaching Jefferson on January 15, 1804. As scholar Junius P. Rodriguez noted, Jefferson was among the first “to comprehend the coast-to-coast notion of American identity that would come to be called Manifest Destiny by the 1840s.” This singular presidential decision opened up the West to the young nation, offering the potential for growth and greatness to future generations.[8]
After appointing William C. Claiborne (1775–1817) territorial governor, Jefferson immediately set as a priority the exploration of these vast new lands. He sent the now-famous Lewis and Clark Expedition into the Northwest, but he was equally interested in the smaller Territory of Orleans to the south, which included the city of New Orleans (fig. 11). In 1804 Jefferson deputized William Dunbar (1749–1810), a scientist, inventor, and planter from Natchez, to explore the southern Mississippi Valley, in what came to be known as the Red River Expedition. Jefferson himself researched and wrote a report titled The Limits and Bounds of Louisiana (1804), which reviewed the region’s history of exploration and ownership by Spain and France in order to delineate the boundaries of the new territory. The report was not widely circulated, but the newspapers of the day gave the content considerable coverage. While some federalist commentators criticized Jefferson’s report for overstating the merits of the region, it offered preliminary information to a nation eager to learn more about the new territory and its history. Moreover, it demonstrates the high level of interest and personal attention Jefferson gave to the acquisition of the Louisiana territory.[9]
Jefferson was not satisfied with just written reports on the new territory, he wanted specimens, objects, and visitors to come to the President’s House (fig. 12). On November 29, 1804, Pierre Derbigny (1769–1829), Jean Noël Destrehan (1754–1823), Pierre Sauve (1749–1822), and the territorial governor, William Claiborne, dined with Jefferson. The French Louisianans had gone to Washington to protest the Governance Act of 1804, which had not created any elected offices or representation for the new American territory. There is no mention of this meeting in Jefferson’s papers, but New Hampshire Senator William Plumer (1759–1850), a federalist, wrote “that [Jefferson] . . . has not made enquires of them relative either to their government, or the civil or natural history of their country—That he studiously avoided conversing with them upon every subject that had relation to their mission here.” Despite his curiosity about the new territory, Jefferson may have felt that it would have been imprudent to discuss the delegation’s demands while the appointed governor sat at the table. After dining at the President’s House just a few days later, Plumer noted that Jefferson had “on the table two bottles of water brought from the river Mississippi.” Whether the New Orleans contingent or Governor Claiborne presented the river water to Jefferson as a curiosity is unknown, but it is likely that one or both brought other objects representative of their region, perhaps including a Campeche chair.[10]
In addition to receiving specimens brought from the new territory by explorers and visitors, Jefferson requested items of specific interest. On August 18, 1808, he wrote to William Brown, collector of the customs for the District of Mississippi, asking for a “campeachy hammock, made of some vegetable substance netted, [which] is commonly to be had at New Orleans. Having no mercantile correspondent there, I take the liberty of asking you to procure me a couple of them & to address them to New York, Philadelphia, or any port in the Chesapeake, to the care of the Collector.” Brown was likely entrusted with this task by virtue of his ties to Jefferson through mutual Trist family in-laws. By October 10, 1808, Brown had fulfilled his commission, but the schooner carrying the hammocks was lost at sea. Although some scholars have posited that the term “campeachy hammock” might be interchangeable with “campeachy chair,” a recently discovered Trist family letter notes that the former was a woven-fiber sling. When he ordered the hammocks in early 1809, Jefferson was nearing the end of his second presidential term and looking forward to his return to private life. Although it is not known what he intended to do with the hammocks, he may well have planned to install them at either Monticello or Poplar Forest.[11]
Jefferson also procured objects from Thomas Bolling Robertson (1779–1828), a Virginian who moved to the Territory of Orleans after finishing his law studies in 1806. A year after Robertson’s arrival in the territory, Jefferson appointed him to the office of secretary of the Territory of Orleans. In 1819 Robertson wrote Jefferson:
I transmit to you a small volume of letters. . . . I hope you will give it the advantage of an agreeable attitude while seated in your Campeachy chair. Many years ago you asked me to send you a few of these chairs; embargo, war, the infrequency of communication between N.O. and the ports of Virginia and my being in Congress prevented me from complying with your request. Meeting with some two weeks ago on the Levee and hearing that there was a vessel then up from Richmond I had them put on; one I sent to my father and the other to you, two men on earth whom I most highly respect. I hope it may answer your expectations; if you wish for more I can now at any time procure and forward them to you.
Although Robertson was not able to send the chairs until nearly a decade after Jefferson left office and after encountering what may have been venture cargo examples on the levee (fig. 13), his letter is proof that Jefferson first asked for Campeche chairs before the Embargo Act, which took effect in December 1807. This indicates that Jefferson knew about the Campeche chair form and was seeking an example for his own use, either publicly or privately, while he resided in the President’s House.[12]
The New Orleans Campeche chair that Robertson sent to Monticello in August 1819 was not the first example Jefferson had owned. A July 28, 1827, editorial in the Daily National Intelligencer reported (fig. 14):
Passing down the Avenue yesterday, I was attracted by an article which was standing in the Cabinet Warehouse of Mr. Henry V. Hill. It is a large Writing and Reading Chair, made, as I understood, for the Department of State; and, for convenience and ingenuity, it excels any I have ever seen. It is of mahogany, made in the form of those Spanish Chairs introduced here by Mr. Jefferson. The legs are short and firm, the back high, and the seat formed of a large sheet of leather suspended from the top of the back, and coming round in a sweep to the front of the frame below, being regulated in its degree of tension by a roller with rack and pinion. The chair has two elbows, made low, and on the outside of that on the right side is an upright iron pillar, from which proceeds a strong arm of iron with a double join, carrying at its extremity a small convenient writing desk, which may be drawn round in front of the person who sits in the chair, or thrown back, or drawn in close to the right hand, at pleasure. The height of this desk is capable of being varied by a screw, so that by means of this double motion, it may be brought into almost any position that the ease of the writer may require. Placed before a bright winter fire, this most convenient establishment secures to a studious man the utmost luxury of comfort, and I feel confident that its general adoption will well reward the ingenuity of the deserving artist who constructed it. S.
The author’s intent may have been to promote cabinetmaker Henry V. Hill’s warehouse, located on Pennsylvania Avenue between 4 1/2 and 6th Streets Northwest, but the notice offers substantial historical information. The chair described in the editorial is clearly of the Campeche form. In reference to seating, the descriptors “Spanish” and “Campeche” were synonymous in the nineteenth century.[13]
The source of Hill’s knowledge of Campeche chairs is not known. He appears to have begun his career at least five years after Jefferson left office and is not mentioned in the latter’s financial accounts or correspondence. If Hill’s Campeche chair was commissioned by the Department of State, as the editorial suggests, that form may have been specified because of its association with Jefferson, who was the first secretary of state under George Washington. The author’s reference to “those Spanish chairs introduced here by Mr. Jefferson” suggests local familiarity with the seating form and reverence for the former president, who by 1827 was considered an icon of the American Revolution and a leading architect of the new republic. Since Jefferson left office eighteen years earlier and never returned to Washington, his introduction of Campeche chairs must have occurred during his presidential term—supporting the hypothesis that a Campeche chair sat in the President’s House and was seen by Jefferson’s visitors. How and when Jefferson acquired his first example is not known, but the most likely scenario is that it arrived after the Louisiana Territory came under American control in 1803.[14]
Jefferson’s family preserved two Campeche chairs as relics of their famous ancestor, but both are too late to be the example that he presumably used in the President’s House. The first chair (fig. 15) has a mahogany frame with a curule base, a flat front stretcher, baluster-shaped arm supports mounted to the outside of the side rail, and flat, S-curved arms, but no turned components. The most striking feature is the extremely tall back and integral upholstered crest. Earlier Campeche chairs typically have applied demilune crests made of wood. The pared-down design of this example suggests that it dates 1815–1820. It may well be the chair that Robertson acquired for Jefferson in New Orleans in August 1819 and that the latter’s granddaughter Ellen Randolph Coolidge described several years later as “made of goat skin . . . [and] from New Orleans.”[15]
After Jefferson’s death, the chair illustrated in figure 15 passed to his grandson Thomas Jefferson Randolph (1792–1875) of Edgehill in Albemarle County, Virginia. Randolph’s December 1875 estate inventory listed “1 arm chair (upright tall back) 4.00,” which could refer to this chair. The Campeche chair remained at Edgehill until circa 1894, when Randolph’s granddaughter Jane Randolph Harrison Randall (1862–1926) took it to Baltimore. Jane’s husband and son subsequently sold the chair and several other family objects to Monticello.[16]
The other Campeche chair (fig. 16) came down in the family of Virginia Randolph Trist who, with her husband, Nicholas (1800–1874), and young children, was the last Jefferson descendant to live at Monticello. In 1828 her sister Cornelia Randolph (1799–1871) wrote that Virginia’s daughter Martha “begs to be put in the ‘yed [yard] chair’ (the campeache) she is also very affectionate.” Cornelia’s use of “yed chair” and “campeache” as interchangeable terms lends credence to the theory that Campeche chairs were occasionally taken outdoors. About 1828 Nicholas Trist accepted a position at the Department of State and went to Washington, D.C., ahead of his family. On May 8, 1829, he wrote Virginia: “I shall want you to send . . . the low chair (like the one Jefferson gave Mrs. Carr) wh. I left in the pavilion.” Although Campeche chairs are not often described as “low chairs,” Trist may have been referring to the height of the seat rather than the height of the back. Since he did not use the proper term for such seating, he offered a comparison to a chair given by his wife’s brother to a Mrs. Carr. A Campeche chair reputedly owned by a Mrs. Carr, a cousin and neighbor of the Randolphs, remains in the family (fig. 17). The Carr chair is a slightly later version of the Campeche form, featuring turned stretchers in the front and back, simplified arms, and terminal bosses on the crest and curule base.[17]
The Trist chair in figure 16 is made of mahogany and follows the traditional Campeche form fairly closely. Two notable deviations are the tapering arm supports mounted on top of the seat rails and the scalloped crest rail. Another nearly identical Campeche chair is known but has no history. Because of its unusual design and family history, decorative arts scholars have suggested that the Trist chair is the one described as “made by Johnny Hemings” in Jefferson’s 1819 letter. However, it now appears these chairs were made in the New Orleans area and sent to Nicholas P. Trist in 1818, when he lived at Monticello as a guest of Thomas Jefferson.[18]
After Jefferson’s death, his family struggled with the loss of their patriarch and the crushing debt he left behind. In an effort to stave off financial ruin, Jefferson’s heirs sold slaves, livestock, farm equipment, and furnishings from Monticello at public auction in January 1827. A document titled “Inventory of the furniture in the house at Monticello” appears to be a list of the items intended for sale rather than a complete inventory of the house’s contents, since it does not mention certain furnished rooms or such common furniture forms as desks. The sale inventory lists two Campeche chairs, both located in the drawing room. Tradition maintains that David Fowler, a Charlottesville cabinetmaker and coffin maker, purchased one of the chairs, but no documentation verifying that history is known. However, his signature on a petition asking the Virginia General Assembly to save a bust of Jefferson and place it at the University of Virginia’s library confirms his presence at the sale.[19]
George Blaetterman (1788–1850), a professor of languages at the University of Virginia and one of the five original professors hired by Jefferson, clearly purchased one of the Campeche chairs in the 1827 sale (fig. 18). Other purchases included a large marble-top table, two dumbwaiters, artwork, and nine chairs, the latter totaling $21.37. By comparison, the Campeche chair cost $18.00. In 1902 George Walter Blatterman (1820–1910), who changed the spelling of his last name, noted that “Dr. Blaetterman purchased a quantity of second hand furniture, at the sale [including] . . . a ‘siesta’ chair which came from Spain—covered in red leather and with 13 stars at the head.” The professor kept the chair at his home outside Charlottesville until his death in 1850. His estate inventory listed parlor furnishings including “1 Jefferson’s chair” valued at $1.50 and a marble table valued at $10.00. The table may have been the example Blaetterman purchased at Monticello. An account of Blaetterman’s estate sale suggests that Thomas Jefferson Randolph purchased both objects, which were described as “1 Marble Table . . . $6.00/ 1 Chair . . . $4.00.” Randolph may have taken the chair and table back to Edgehill, but there is no definitive mention of either piece in his estate records.[20]
A New Orleans Campeche chair that descended in the Trist-Gilmer families (fig. 1) appears to be similar to the example Blaetterman purchased at Monticello. The twelve inlaid stars on the crest of the Trist-Gilmer chair possibly represent the original twelve parishes that made up the Territory of Orleans (fig. 19). Although George Walter Blatterman wrote that the chair his foster father purchased at Monticello had “13 stars at the head,” it is likely that there were only twelve. Blatterman’s memory could have been flawed, or he may have associated the number of stars with the number of original colonies, which would have been logical, given Jefferson’s involvement in the American Revolution.[21]
Little is known about the early history of the chair illustrated in figure 1, except that it descended in the Gilmer family, who had multiple connections to Jefferson, the Trist family, and the Louisiana Territory. Elizabeth House Trist (ca. 1751–1828) was Jefferson’s lifelong friend, and her son Hore Browse Trist (1775–1804) moved to New Orleans and was appointed by Jefferson collector of the customs for the District of Mississippi in 1803. A year later he died of fever, leaving two sons, his widow, and his widowed mother alone in Louisiana. After her return to Virginia in 1809, Elizabeth House Trist lived with her niece Mary House Gilmer (1785–1853) and her husband, Peachy Gilmer (1779–1836), in Henry and later Bedford counties, but she also spent long spells with friends in Albemarle County. Her grandson Nicholas Philip Trist became Jefferson’s private secretary and in 1824 married the latter’s granddaughter Virginia Randolph.[22]
Writing from his home in Liberty, Virginia, on January 14, 1821, attorney Peachy Gilmer asked Jefferson: “Mrs. Trist some time ago presented me a campeachy chair, which had been sent for her to Monticello, and informed me that you had been so obliging, as to offer it sent to Poplar Forest.” A few days later Jefferson wrote: “the chair which is the subject of your letter . . . was sent to Poplar Forest the last summer, and has only awaited the order of Mrs. Trist or yourself. I write Mr. Yancy this day to deliver it to any person under your order.” Jefferson’s letter to Yancy described the chair as being “crosslegged covered with red Marocco” and noted that it could be “distinguished from the one of the same kind sent up last by wagon as being of a brighter fresher colour, and having a green ferret across the back, covering a seam in the leather.” From Jefferson’s description, he is concisely expressing details to help Yancy distinguish between two very similar chairs, ones not likely made at Monticello, only transshipped from there. This rules out examples made by John Hemmings and indicates that there were two imported Campeche chairs very similar in appearance at Poplar Forest in 1820. This exchange might reference the Campeche chair illustrated in figure 1 and Jefferson’s missing chair with inlaid stars. However, these chairs, which may date to about 1803, were approximately a decade old at the time. Other possible candidates are the Trist chair shown in figure 16 and its near mate that has no provenance.[23]
The Campeche Chair through Jefferson’s Eyes
When he took office, Jefferson introduced a tone at the President’s House and public events that was considerably less aristocratic than that of his federalist predecessors. Through his Republican platform, he sought to establish a less-restrictive social hierarchy and usher in an era of simplicity in politics as well as in everyday life. On January 30, 1804, the National Intelligencer alluded to the egalitarian spirit of his administration in its description of a ball celebrating the transfer of the Louisiana Territory:
The plain unembellished walls of our rooms, the want of splendor, and of that admiration which painting, and gilding, & all artful scenery of architecture can produce, and the still plainer quality of our manners, may, perhaps, to a foreign eye, and to foreign habits, place the grade of such a public festival far below the spectacles that celebrate the achievements of Warriors, or the peace that only suspends . . . destruction—But what humanity rejoices in the extension of the empire of freedom, and of peace, the superficial effects of the arts of the painter, and of the gilder, vanish before the splendor of the event, and put place and form out of consideration.
The Republicans were proud that they had found a peaceful way to expand the nation, while shunning “spectacles that celebrate the achievements of Warriors.” From their perspective, the Louisiana Purchase was majestic in and of itself.[24]
As wonders from the new territory arrived in Washington, Jefferson displayed them at the President’s House so that visitors would be edified and entertained. Depending on when they came, the public could have seen Native American weapons, furs, antlers, skeletons, exotic plants, and live animals, including a magpie and grizzly bear cubs. Many of these specimens were collected during the Lewis and Clark Expedition into the upper Louisiana Territory, shipped south to New Orleans, and from there carried to Washington, Philadelphia, or Monticello. Additional material came from William Dunbar’s Red River Expedition of 1804. The public may have been introduced to the Campeche chair through one of Jefferson’s exhibits, since the novelty of that lounging form and its allusions to Spanish culture would have made it appropriate for display. Jefferson’s penchant for natural history exhibits was well known even before his retirement, as the entry, or Indian, hall at Monticello attests (fig. 20). At the President’s House and Monticello, citizens had the opportunity to learn about the Louisiana Territory and embrace it as an exciting and accessible addition to the nation.[25]
From Jefferson’s perspective, the Campeche chair was more than a totem of the Louisiana Purchase. His classical education meant he had not only read Livy, whose history of Rome mentioned the sella curulis, but considered that text essential reading for students, including his own granddaughters. In 1814 Boston visitor Francis Calley Gray (1790–1856) noted that the mantel in Jefferson’s dining room (fig. 21) was furnished with “many books of all kinds, Livy, Orosious, Edinburgh Review, 1 vol. of Edgeworth’s Moral Tales, etc., etc.”[26]
Jefferson had many opportunities to see curule stools when he served as minister to France from 1784 to 1789. In 1785 he toured the Gothic basilica of St.-Denis, the burial place of French kings and the repository of the treasury, which at that time included Dagobert’s throne (fig. 3). From this relic, Jefferson would have learned that curule seating was not limited to Republican or Imperial Rome but had survived to become a symbol of authority in Europe into the Middle Ages and beyond.[27]
While visiting Versailles and other royal palaces, Jefferson would have encountered pliants, which are a variation of the sella curulis (fig. 22). Pliants, made as either folding or fixed versions of the crossed-legged stool, became common fixtures in public apartments, where court etiquette established by Louis XIV (1638–1715) mandated that only persons of suitable rank were allowed to sit in the presence of the king or queen. When such permission was granted, the recipient typically sat on a pliant. Through such use, the pliant became a powerful symbol of imperial authority.[28]
Jefferson may have seen an evocative representation of a pliant when he attended the Paris Salon of 1787. As Pietro Antonio Martini’s (1738–1797) Exposition au Salon du Louvre en 1787 indicates, Adélaïde Labille-Guiard’s (1749–1803) portrait Adélaïde of France, Daughter of Louis XV, Known as Madame Adélaïde (1787) was prominently displayed at the exhibition (fig. 23). Madame Adélaïde (1732–1800) was the daughter of Louis XV (1710–1774) and aunt of the increasingly unpopular King Louis XVI (1754–1793). The carved and gilded pliant in the foreground of Madame Adélaïde’s portrait (fig. 24) and the medallion profiles of her parents and brother associate her with the stability and majesty of the royal family’s earlier generation. Although Jefferson never mentioned this painting, he may have seen it when he visited Labille-Guiard’s Paris studio. A September 9, 1786, entry in his memorandum book recorded, “Pd. Mlle. Guyard for picture 240f.”[29]
On the same day, Jefferson “Paid seeing Gardes meubles 12f.” The Hôtel du Garde-Meuble held the workshops and administrative arm responsible for furnishing the royal palaces and served as a warehouse for fine furniture, art, the crown jewels, and other historic relics. During his visit, Jefferson may have seen furniture commissioned for the nobility, including neoclassical versions of the pliant (fig. 22), which were enjoying a revival at that time.[30]
Although Jefferson furnished many rooms in his Paris house, no pliants or other curule forms were listed among the furniture he brought back to America in 1790. At that date, this class of seating may not have appealed to Jefferson because of its association with absolutism. By the time he acquired a Campeche chair, however, more than a decade had passed since the fall of the Bourbon monarchy, and the Campeche chair’s classical lineage and later popularity in the Louisiana Territory offered rich possibilities as an emblem of Jefferson’s republican vision for America.[31]
After serving his term, Jefferson made sure that his role in the Louisiana Purchase was demonstrated through his arrangement of art and furniture at Monticello. He kept two Campeche chairs in the large parlor on either side of the portico doors. A floor plan drawn by his granddaughter Cornelia Randolph (fig. 25) indicates that he displayed a bust of Napoleon (fig. 26) behind the chair to the left and a bust of Emperor Alexander of Russia behind the chair to the right. The juxtaposition of a Campeche chair, especially if it was the one embellished with stars, with the bust of Napoleon would have reminded guests and family members of the political victory Jefferson achieved with the Louisiana Purchase.[32]
Jefferson understood that objects could become revered relics and lasting symbols of historic events. Near the end of his life, he sent his granddaughter Ellen Randolph Coolidge the lap desk that he used when drafting the Declaration of Independence (fig. 27), intending it as a gift for her husband, Joseph Coolidge (1798–1879). Jefferson wrote, “if then things acquire a superstitious value because of their connection with particular persons, surely a connection with the great Charter of our Independence may give a value to what has been associated with that [document]. . . . Its imaginary value will increase with the years . . . he [Mr. Coolidge] may see it carried in the procession of our nation’s birthday, as the relics of the saints are in those of the churches.” Jefferson’s words proved prophetic, as the lap desk is now one of the most famous historic objects in the collection of the Smithsonian Institution. For Jefferson, the Campeche chairs in his parlor may have been equally symbolic as totems of his role in the Louisiana Purchase and the country’s westward expansion.[33]
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
For assistance with this article, the author thanks Kay Arthur, Gavin Ashworth, Luke Beckerdite, Anna Berkes, Jenny Burden, Elizabeth Chew, Jessica Dorman, Lisa Francavilla, Cybèle Trione Gontar, Ellen Hickman, Eric Johnson, Sue Perdue, Gail Pond, Sumpter Priddy III, Jack Robertson, Justin Sarafin, Mary Scott-Fleming, Robert Self, Leah Stearns, Susan R. Stein, Endrina Tay, Carrie Taylor, and Gaye Wilson. I am particularly indebted to David Ehrenpreis, who challenges me to reach and create, both in work and in life.
