The names of Thomas Cook and Richard Parkin are not typically listed alongside those of Anthony G. Quervelle, Joseph B. Barry, Michel Bouvier, and other renowned Philadelphia furniture makers of the classical period. Yet, at the time, that is precisely the company Cook and Parkin kept. Niles’ Weekly Register’s review of the Franklin Institute’s second annual exhibition of manufactures in 1825 listed “beautiful and otherwise remarkable specimens of manufacture” by the city’s leading cabinetmakers, including “White, Bouvier, . . . Quervyl [Quervelle], . . . [and] Cook and Parkins [sic].”[1]
The stenciled and printed trademark of Cook and Parkin’s firm and the printed label of Richard Parkin are found on some of the most avant-garde pieces of American classical furniture, but many unmarked objects of comparable importance have escaped the attention of scholars and collectors. Thanks to the recent discovery of a pair of side chairs, one of which is illustrated in figure 1, Parkin’s name can now be associated with seating in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and the Yale University Art Gallery. These new findings have provided the impetus to reexamine the lives and work of Cook and Parkin, to raise questions about their training and design influences, and to return them to their former place in the firmament of Philadelphia’s nineteenth-century cabinetmaking community.
Richard Parkin was born in England circa 1787, died in Philadelphia on September 16, 1861, and was buried in the American Mechanics Cemetery on Islington Lane at Twenty-Seventh Street. Family tradition maintains that he emigrated from Sheffeld, England, and it is likely that he served his apprenticeship before coming to the United States. John and Hannah (Padley) Parkin of Sheffeld had a son named Richard in 1791, but no definitive connection between that family and the émigré cabinetmaker has been established. Similarly, a family of Parkins arrived in Philadelphia from Liverpool on the ship Lancaster in September 1819, but the passenger manifest does not mention anyone named Richard. The cabinetmaker’s absence in the 1810 and 1820 federal censuses suggests that he arrived shortly before his name began to appear in Philadelphia directories in partnership with Cook in 1819.[2]
On February 6, 1825, Parkin married Clara Stevens (1801–1875) in a civil ceremony performed by Philadelphia mayor Joseph Watson (1784–1841). Parkin may have had a business connection to Watson, who worked as a lumber merchant before taking office in 1824. Richard and Clara had six children. The eldest, Thomas, was born in Philadelphia in 1827, followed by Sarah, born in 1831, twins Clara (d. 1860) and Anna in 1833, Henry (d. 1885) in 1835, and Richard Jr. two years later. All three sons became cabinetmakers, but none of their work has been identified.[3]
Thomas Cook’s naturalization application, dated July 16, 1819, describes his trade as “cabinetmaker” and states that he was born in Yorkshire, England, on May 12, 1789, emigrated from London, and arrived in Philadelphia on April 29, 1817. His wife, Ann (ca. 1786–1871), also was born in England, and it is likely that they came to America together. Thomas was listed at 26 Bank Street in Dock Ward in the 1820 Philadelphia city directories. He and Ann had one child, a daughter, Mary (ca. 1823–187?). Cook retired from business at the age of forty-nine, younger than many of his contemporaries. He seems to have accumulated enough capital to invest in real estate, like his competitors Bouvier and Quervelle. Beginning circa 1835, Cook devoted his time to the acquisition of investment property and bought at least eight such lots. The 1860 U.S. census recorded his wealth at $10,000 and Parkin’s at $1,000, a disparity that might be explained by the number of children they each raised. Cook died on May 13, 1868, at seventy-nine, after thirty-one years as a “gentleman,” leaving his investments to his daughter, Mary Stellwagen, and the income from rents and dividends from securities to his wife for her lifetime. Two years after his death, the 1870 census valued his widow’s net worth at $15,000 and his daughter’s at $24,000.[4]
Cook & Parkin
Thomas Cook and Richard Parkin were among the first generation of English cabinetmakers born during the classical revival of the late eighteenth century. Their birth dates nearly coincided with the publication of George Hepplewhite’s Cabinet-Maker and Upholsterer’s Guide (1788), the first broadly available design book in the classical taste, and their apprenticeships likely began just before the publication of Thomas Sheraton’s Cabinet Dictionary (1803). The latter book and Thomas Hope’s Household Furniture and Interior Decoration (1807) helped shift the focus of classical design from Robert Adam’s abstract interpretations of ancient designs to furniture based on archaeological models. As furniture historian Joseph Aronson suggests, pattern books also heralded the final step in an “evolution from cottage handicraft through the Factory System and the Industrial Revolution . . . the ultimate division of functions . . . aiming for greater output and efficiency to meet the demands of expanding markets and wealth.” During their apprenticeships, Cook and Parkin would have developed specialized hand skills while learning how to design furniture, create working drawings, and exploit the new industrialized systems of production. By the time they arrived in Philadelphia, both men were capable craftsmen with clear ideas about what furniture in the classical taste should look like and how it should be made.[5]
The Philadelphia directory listed Cook & Parkin first as “Chair Makers” at 26 Bank Street in 1819, then as “Cabinet Makers” at 56 Walnut Street from 1820 to 1833 (fig. 2). Cook also appeared alone, listed as a cabinetmaker at 4 Fromberger’s Court in Paxton’s Directory, in 1819, and in some directories he and Parkin were listed jointly as “Chair Makers” as late as 1824. In 1829, while maintaining a business at 56 Walnut Street, both men began working at separate addresses, Parkin at 94 South Third Street and Cook at 7 Pear Street. Four years later, they dissolved their partnership when Parkin moved to Egyptian Hall, a building at 134 South Second Street, leased from cabinetmaker Joseph Barry; Cook remained at 56 Walnut Street.[6]
Cook and Parkin’s separation in 1829 may have been an expedient way to gain production space while maintaining 56 Walnut Street as a showroom. Scholar Deborah Ducoff-Barone has noted that the central business district, which encompassed that area of Walnut Street, was a prestigious location and the epicenter of Philadelphia’s furniture making industry (fig. 3). Rents were high, and only the most successful and well-capitalized firms could afford to set up and maintain businesses there. All but two of the cabinetmaking enterprises mentioned in the October 15, 1825, issue of Niles’ Weekly Register were located within two blocks of Cook and Parkin’s Walnut Street address and Parkin’s shop on South Second Street (after 1833): Quervelle at 126 South Second Street (1825–1848), Bouvier at 91 South Second Street (1825–1844), Charles H. White at 109 Walnut Street (1815–1854), and John Jamison at 75 Dock Street (1815–1829). These shop masters understood that location was key to securing wealthy local patrons and attracting foreign buyers and entrepreneurs engaged in the coastal trade.[7]
Cook maintained a business at 56 Walnut until 1837, when he retired from the cabinetmaking trade. City directories referred to him as a “gentleman” until 1860, eight years before his death. Parkin’s forty-one-year career was even more extensive, among the longest of any Philadelphia cabinetmaker of the period. Similarly, Cook and Parkin’s fourteen-year partnership was longer than 90 percent of all cabinetmaking businesses recorded in Philadelphia between 1800 and 1840.[8]
In the absence of documentation, the size of Cook and Parkin’s manufacturing business can be extrapolated through comparison with other firms. Barry advertised “employment for six journeymen cabinetmakers” while working at 134 South Second Street, a building he subsequently leased to Joseph Aiken and then to Richard Parkin. While at that location, Aiken’s shop had “five turning lathes and a number of workbenches.” During Barry’s tenancy, 134 South Second Street was a shop and wareroom as well as a dwelling, but advertisements for the sale of Aiken’s stock in 1829 indicate that the space was entirely dedicated to selling furniture. It is reasonable to assume that the workforce and scope of Parkin’s business was larger than Barry’s and at least as large as Aiken’s, but smaller than that of Cook and Parkin.[9]
Maintaining a large business between 1819 and 1833 was a notable accomplishment for Cook & Parkin because that period was as difficult and unstable as the American cabinet trade had ever known. Their firm survived two major depressions, damage to the local economy caused by President Andrew Jackson’s struggle with the Second Bank of the United States, wild fluctuations in the price of mahogany, and worker strikes precipitated by two technological advancements—the introduction of the steam-powered lathe and the circular saw.
In 1826 confrontations between master cabinetmakers and journeymen forced a revision of piecework prices and, by extension, the cost to produce various furniture forms. Working with a three-man “Committee of Journeymen,” the “Committee of Employers,” composed of Parkin, White, and Jamison, issued a broadside detailing the “per centage upon start prices of jobs” in the 1826 reissuing of the 1811 Journeyman Cabinet and Chairmaker’s Pennsylvania Book of Prices. Parkin’s leadership position on the committee reflects his high stature as a cabinetmaker as well as Cook & Parkin’s importance as an employer of numerous journeymen.[10]
Like many of Philadelphia’s most successful firms, Cook & Parkin consigned furniture to agents in southern cities and ports in the Caribbean and South America. Outbound coastal manifests for the port of Philadelphia beginning in 1823 recorded multiple shipments by the firm to Charleston, South Carolina; Savannah, Georgia; Baltimore, Maryland; Petersburg, Virginia; and St. Thomas in the Virgin Islands. As was the case with Cook & Parkin, cabinet- and chairmaking firms that exported furniture tended to be among the most long-lived in Philadelphia.[11]
Egyptian Hall
In 1809 Barry built and occupied a row house at 134 South Second Street. Typical of many Philadelphia town houses (figs. 2, 4), this two-storey brick building had a showroom on the street side of the first floor and shop space at the back and on the second floor. Barry may have eliminated the wall that usually separated the first-floor rooms, since his space—22 by 80 feet—was much longer than most warerooms. Furniture warerooms like Barry’s typically had large windows so clients and pedestrians could view the stock-in-trade. His featured “two plain Bulk windows glass 12 by 20 inches & a square head door with a fan sash.”[12]
When Barry relocated his business in 1825, he rented the building at 134 South Second Street to the Pennsylvania Society of Journeymen Cabinetmakers for use as a wareroom. Aiken took over the lease in 1827, followed by Parkin six years later. During Parkin’s tenancy, the front door and bulk windows were replaced with “2 large cased posts & 3 folding sash front doors” framed by “4 large Square boxed open Egyptian Columns . . . crowned by a large Carved Human Bust, Square Capt . . . surmounted by a plain Egyptian entablature and cornice,” thereafter being known as Egyptian Hall (fig. 5).
Parkin’s occupancy during and after this redesign advertised his status as a leader of fashion and a beacon of new taste. The façade must have created a striking architectural tableau juxtaposed with Benjamin Latrobe’s Bank of Pennsylvania on South Second Street, which was the first Greek revival building in the United States. Both buildings were testaments to the era’s fascination with ancient cultures.[13]
Parkin’s wareroom was not the first or the only Philadelphia furniture shop to undergo refurbishment during this period, but the modifications made by him and his landlord Barry, were exceptionally elaborate and uniquely “Egyptian,” which explains Parkin’s reference to that taste on his label and trade card. It is likely that both men were familiar with Egyptian Hall, the widely known showroom maintained by English cabinetmaker George Bullock (1782/83–1818) in Piccadilly, London (fig. 6). In 1811 Barry traveled to that city and Paris to buy furniture and other “fashionable articles,” which he offered in the Aurora General Advertiser the following year—“the newest and most fashionable Cabinet Furniture, superbly finished in the rich Egyptian and Gothic style.” The construction of Egyptian Hall began in 1810 and would have been open when Barry was in London.[14]
Parkin remained at Egyptian Hall for about sixteen years until relocating to Lewis Street below Thompson, where he was joined in 1853 by his son Thomas, who died unexpectedly in 1855. From 1856 to 1860 Parkin operated a steam sawmill, first at 399 Broad Street, then at 683 North Broad, and finally at Spring Garden, where he was joined by another son, Richard Jr. In 1860, which was Richard Sr.’s last directory appearance, their firm was referred to as Richard Parkin & Son.[15]
The Furniture of Cook & Parkin
On December 10, 1819, Cook & Parkin submitted their earliest known bill to Zaccheus Collins (1764–1831) for a mahogany breakfast table valued at $25.00.[16] Collins was a Philadelphia merchant, botanist, and member of the American Philosophical Society and the Philadelphia Society of Natural Sciences. Earlier in his career, he was a partner in his father’s business, Stephen Collins & Son. They bought and sold a variety of goods, including Windsor chairs. Zaccheus’s patronage shows that Cook and Parkin developed a reputation among elite members of Philadelphia society shortly after establishing their firm.[17]
One of the most significant examples of Cook & Parkin’s work is a sideboard bearing the firm’s engraved paper label: “COOK & PARKIN / Cabinet and Chair Makers / No. 58 / Walnut Street / Between Dock & Third Streets / South Side / PHILAD” (figs. 7, 8). The sideboard probably dates to the early 1820s, because Cook & Parkin are described as “cabinet and chair makers” in directory entries before 1824 and only as “cabinetmakers” thereafter. The stenciled ink text on other labels refers to “Cabinetware” and “mahogany seating.” The design of the sideboard was adapted from the “large library or writing-table flanked with paper presses, or escrutoirs” illustrated in plate 11 in Hope’s Household Furniture and Interior Decoration (fig. 9). Many cabinetmakers were inspired by Hope’s designs, but American copies of his archaeologically based designs are rare.[18]
Among the many exceptional characteristics of this sideboard is the use of Pergamene capitals surmounting the pillars flanking the upper cabinets (fig. 10). This variation on the Corinthian capital, identified with the ancient city of Pergamum near the Aegean coast of Asia Minor, has palm fronds issuing from a basket of acanthus leaves. Examples of this capital are extremely uncommon and not used in London work until the late 1820s, when they were adapted for table base designs by George Smith and Peter and Michael Angelo Nicholson. There are two plausible explanations for the use of Pergamene capitals on Cook & Parkin furniture made prior to the appearance of those capitals in London design books. They may have seen the example Lord Elgin brought to England with the Elgin marbles before they emigrated, or they had access to Giovanni Battista Piranesi’s Della magnificenza ed architettura de’ Romani (1761).[19]
A sideboard documented to Cook & Parkin and visible in a 1930s photograph of the dining room in the house of Anthony Wayne in Easttown Township, Paoli, Pennsylvania, is more in keeping with conventional Philadelphia classical styles (fig. 11). Isaac Wayne purchased the piece in 1823, when he was redecorating the house and beginning his first term as a U.S. senator. On August 7 of that year, his brother-in-law and agent William Atlee wrote:
I fear not that the article will please you, for I think it handsome, this the opinion of a good workman who accompanied me it is pronounced of good workmanship & the best materials & well seasoned stuff. . . . I have however exceeded your limit as to price, ten dollars, but I believe in the end you will be a gainer—I will challenge this City to produce a better, or one so gentile for that sum.[20]
A slightly later pier table with Cook & Parkin’s stenciled label (figs. 12, 13) has a cavetto frieze rather than a flat and shaped frieze like those often used by Quervelle and other Philadelphia cabinetmakers who worked in the classical style. Published examples include the mantelpiece and table shown in plates 10 and 12, respectively, in Hope’s Household Furniture (fig. 14) and an “Egyptian Chimney-Front” illustrated in Rudolph Ackermann’s Repository of Arts, Literature, Commerce, Manufactures, Fashions, and Politics.[21]
The pilasters of the pier table are attached to the bottom board with two dovetails (fig. 15), and the molded boards of the frieze above have stepped miters at the front corners (fig. 16). By contrast, many Philadelphia pier tables of this period have pilasters attached with a single dovetail and cornice boards joined at the front corner with conventional miters, lap joints, or blind dovetails. Even more distinctive is Cook & Parkin’s incorporation of a dust board under the frieze (fig. 17).
The labeled pier table is related to three unmarked examples similar to the one illustrated in figure 18. Each has a cavetto frieze below a Gothic astragal, or knife-edge molding; identical stenciling at the center and corners of the frieze; and the same bronze mounts. Although the construction of these objects differs, it is possible that all are from Cook & Parkin’s shop. Structural variations are common in the work of large cabinetmaking enterprises, which typically employed several apprentices and journeymen.[22]
Cook and Parkin’s entrepreneurial spirit and embrace of avant-garde design are reflected in their decision to offer faux-gilded metal furniture. An article in the Franklin Journal and American Mechanics’ Magazine of 1827 referred to an artimomantico bedstead among the stock-in-trade in the firm’s “cabinet wareroom.” Although the journal erroneously reported that a gentleman from Leghorn (Livorno), Italy, had recently invented that alloy, the article correctly stated that artimomantico had been used for buttons and tableware sold by Louis Vernon Company, a Philadelphia mercantile firm specializing in luxury goods. Metal bedsteads became popular in the second quarter of the nineteenth century, largely because they were perceived as being more hygienic and insect-resistant than wooden examples. J. C. Loudon described the virtues of cast-iron bedsteads, dining tables, sideboards, and seating (hall, lobby, and porch chairs) in his Encyclopaedia of Cottage, Farm and Villa Architecture and Furniture (1833) and noted that iron bedsteads “are to be found in houses of people of wealth and fashion in London; sometimes even for best beds.” The artimomantico bedstead offered by Cook & Parkin six years earlier was at the vanguard of this new fashion in domestic furniture.[23]
Contemporary Philadelphia cabinetmakers viewed Cook & Parkin as leaders in style and technological innovation. After Joseph Aiken and Company received the right to manufacture Daniel Powles’s patent bed in 1827, the firm solicited Cook & Parkin’s endorsement along with that of Joseph Barry, William Brown, Michel Bouvier, Lewis Costens, John Jamison, Jacob Jarret, Anthony G. Quervelle and Charles H. White. All of these men were at the summit of the cabinet trade in early nineteenth-century Philadelphia.[24]
The center table illustrated in figure 19 may have been inspired by Pierre de la Mésangère’s 1821 design for a table à thé published in his Collection de meubles et objets de goût (1802–1830) (fig. 20). The center table has two ink stencils reading, “COOK & PARKIN / Cabinetware / Mahogany seating / No. 56 Walnut St. / Philadelphia” and depicting what appears to be a sofa. Three nearly identical, marble-top center tables are known, one bearing a stencil like those on the example shown here, as well as a rosewood drum table with an identical base and a radial inlaid top (fig. 21). A sixth center table of the same design but with a wooden top, was in the second-floor parlor of the George Eveleigh House at 39 Church Street, Charleston, South Carolina, when it appeared in the Octagon Library of Early American Architecture (1927) (fig. 22). By family tradition, the table can be traced to 1875, when Richard Maynard Marshal (1845–1894) purchased the Eveleigh House from Mary Ann Love, widow of Charles Love. Whether the table was in the house when Marshal acquired it or was inherited from his father, Alexander W. Marshal, it is likely that it had been in Charleston since the late 1820s. Cook & Parkin consigned furniture to Charleston agents Thomas H. Deas in 1825 and James Dick in 1830.[25]
A mechanical chair can also be attributed to Cook & Parkin’s shop based on its arm supports (figs. 23, 24), which relate directly to the acanthus-carved scrolls on the center tables (see fig. 19). Thomas King’s Modern Style of Cabinet Work Exemplified (1829) shows several mechanical and easy chairs, including examples with “inclining backs” (plate ten in the supplement) and construction features identical to those of the attributed chair (fig. 25). The crest on the Cook & Parkin chair may also have been inspired by details in one of King’s illustrations. The S-scrolls, leafage, and anthemion are similar to those on the back on the “Sideboard Table” shown in plate 45 (figs. 26, 27). Variations of this design also appear on the bottom edge of the tablet back on side chairs from Parkin’s shop (see figs. 50–52) and on a “Drawing Room Chair” illustrated in plate 3 of Smith’s Cabinet Maker and Upholsterer’s Guide.
American mechanical chairs are exceedingly rare. A few Boston examples are known, including one bearing the partial label of Boston upholsterer William Hancock (act. 1820–1835). In 1833 his brother’s upholstery firm, John Hancock and Company, Philadelphia, placed an advertisement in DeSilver’s City Directory and Stranger’s Guide, touting “easy chairs of every description.” John’s advertisement also featured an engraving of a Grecian couch with a tubular drawer at one end identical to a couch illustrated in William’s advertisements and on his label. John’s advertisement and his 1835 estate inventory reveal that “Self Acting Chairs” and “Recumbent chairs” (easy chairs with seats that slide forward as the back reclines) were among his stock-in-trade as well. His estate inventory also reveals that Cook and Parkin owed him $77.95 and $188.40, respectively, and that Cook Thomas was one of the appraisers. Because the Hancock brothers were in the mechanical chair business, this financial connection and the close proximity of John Hancock’s and Cook & Parkin’s shops suggest that Hancock commissioned and upholstered the mechanical chair illustrated in figure 23. Upholsterers and decorators often ordered seating from cabinetmakers and chairmakers.[26]
Consumers often bought furniture directly from upholsterers, decorators, cabinetmakers, and other suppliers, including those in distant cities. Maria Hull Campbell of Savannah, Georgia, commissioned furniture from Cook & Parkin or Cook working independently while visiting Philadelphia. The firm had shipped furniture to Savannah during the 1820s, and it is likely that their products had developed a good reputation among her family and friends. In 1830 Maria wrote her friend George Jones Kollock (1810–1894) in Philadelphia, complaining about a repair made to a wardrobe she had purchased earlier:
I requested to put a “ketch” on my wardrobe, similar to your Aunts, & showed him that, which he promised to do. He put a hook instead—and in attempting to hook the wardrobe, the hook flies off—This has always been the case. But now the wood has shrunk so much, that neither lock nor hook is of any use—for the doors do not meet. I must trouble you to ask [Cook & Parkin] . . . to send me a ketch . . . & I will get it fixed I hope by a Cabinet maker in this place.[27]
Campbell’s dismay at the inadequately seasoned wood of her wardrobe does not seem to have shaken the loyalty other Savannah clients felt to Cook, nor did his high prices dissuade them. In August 1831 Dr. Phineas Miller Kollock (1804–1872) wrote his brother and agent George:
I am very much surprised . . . concerning the sofa—Aunt Harriet did not give more than $50.00 for both of hers exclusive of cushions, & I cannot imagine how these last can cost more than $15.00 or $20.00—If you cannot however, procure a Sofa of the description I mention (which I do not think Cook could have understood) I will thank you to . . . procure one of any cheaper pattern which Aunt Jones may like—If it will not be giving Aunt too much trouble, I wish you would consult her in regard to every thing which you purchase, inasmuch as the people with whom you have to deal will be very apt to impose upon one whom they may think not much experienced in such matters. In regard to the Sofa, if you cannot do better, I should like a Lounge like those which Aunt used to have in her rooms, which I should suppose were not quite as expensive—Whatever you get, desire the man to keep a particular description of it, as I may at some future period desire to get a match for it—If possible I do not wish the Sofa & cushions to cost more than $50.00.[28]
The following year Dr. Kollock asked his brother to procure
at Cooke’s [sic] a small sized center table, of a size suitable for such a room as Aunt’s front parlor . . . of the best bird’s eye maple, perfectly plain, without black moulding, the pedestal exactly after the pattern of that of my dining tables. Mr. Wm. W. Gordon of this City has one exactly of the description which I wish—I think he purchased it in Philadelphia, probably at Cooke’s [sic], & I think I have understood that it cost about $30.00. I wish you would charge Cooke [sic] to be very sure, that the wood of which he makes the furniture is well seasoned; for the maple furniture which he has sent me has warped in some places, & opened at the joints.[29]
Parkin’s involvement with Kollock’s purchases is ambiguous. What is clear, however, is that Savannah’s climate created problems with furniture purchased by both those patrons and that Cook, probably in collaboration with Parkin, made maple furniture for several prominent Savannah families. Margaret Telfair, a close friend of the Kollocks, ordered a mahogany dining table from Cook in 1836 (fig. 28), which suggests that his shop may have been responsible for the maple pieces owned by her and her brother, Alexander. The latter include a set of eighteen extraordinary curule-base, cane seat, curly-maple chairs (fig. 29), a pair of figured maple Grecian couches, and a bird’s-eye maple center table.[30]
The Telfair table’s masterful design was inspired by plate 31 in Thomas Sheraton’s Designs for Household Furniture (1812) (fig. 30) and plate 8 in Richard Brown’s The Rudiments of Drawing Cabinet and Upholstery Furniture (1820) (fig. 31), and the scrolled supports were derived from those shown in supplementary plate 17 in King’s Modern Style of Cabinet Work Exemplified (fig. 32). Although American cabinetmakers occasionally adapted details from different plates in the same design book, the maker of the Telfair table’s reliance on three design books is highly unusual. This attests to the depth of Cook’s library and knowledge of British classical style and his ability to work within that idiom.
Cook & Parkin’s favorable reputation in the South is further confirmed by Louisiana senator Josiah Stoddard Johnston’s (1784–1833) patronage. On January 16, 1826, Cook and Parkin wrote, “This being the season of the year we have to pay our bills, if you [Johnston] make it convenient to remit us the amount of your bill it would relieve us very much at present $677=00. The bill of the last Furniture was duly paid.” Judging from the amount owed, Johnston must have been one of Cook & Parkin’s most important clients. His debt would have been sufficient to furnish an entire house, not to mention the furniture for which payment had been received.[31]
George Harrison Burwell (1799–1873) of Millwood, Virginia, was also a customer of Cook & Parkin. On December 1, 1831, the firm charged Burwell $455.00 for a dressing table, a set of dining tables, two sofas, a wardrobe, a ladies’ worktable, and a sideboard. The invoice was accompanied by a note indicating that Cook & Parkin had erred in sending Burwell a marble-top basin stand and asked that he send $15.00, which was a 25 percent discount of the retail price.[32] Although the basin stand has not been identified, it may have resembled a marble-top washstand bearing Parkin’s Egyptian Hall label (figs. 33, 34). Burwell’s furniture was intended for Carter Hall, a house on 5,800 acres inherited from his father in 1814 (fig. 35). He redecorated Carter Hall after the death of his first wife and his remarriage to Agnes Atkinson (1810–1885) in August 1831.[33]
A Grecian sofa bearing the stencil mark of Cook & Parkin is roughly contemporaneous with Burwell’s order, and it descended in families living on the north fork of the Shenandoah River near Millwood (fig. 36). Unlike much formal furniture of the age, which was inspired by engravings in English or French pattern books, the sofa’s design is distinctively Philadelphia. Local cabinetmakers who made related sofas with low scrolled backs, shell-shaped armrests, and squat turned legs included Joseph Barry, Charles and John White, and David Fleetwood. Cook & Parkin’s version of this form is as stylish and well made as any of their competitors’ products.[34]
During the late 1820s the “Grecian” or “Plain” style began supplanting the more architectonic French Empire. Inspired by the forms of Greek antiquity and influenced by French Restoration tastes (1815–1830), the Grecian style was sleeker, more streamlined, and more curvilinear than its predecessors. Through the furniture export trade, Cook & Parkin contributed to the dissemination of the Grecian style, which became ubiquitous in American furniture design by 1833.[35]
At the time of their manufacture, the wardrobes illustrated in figures 37 and 38 would have been considered avant-garde examples of the Grecian style. Composed entirely of abstracted geometric forms, Cook & Parkin’s were more streamlined and “modern” than any contemporaneous published designs for that form. With a base price of $30.00, winged wardrobes were the most expensive furniture form described in the Philadelphia Cabinet and Chair Makers’ Union Book of Prices for Manufacturing Cabinet Ware (1828). The wardrobe George Harrison Burwell purchased from Cook & Parkin in 1831 cost $65.00.[36]
Design features that occur in later examples of Cook & Parkin’s work, as well as furniture made by Parkin working independently, include the use of distinctive demilune panels (figs. 37-41), large flat bosses with ovolo-molded edges (figs. 40, 41, 46, 52, 53, 57), bosses with prominent convex centers surrounded by ovolo molding (see figs. 50, 53), and a variety of individualistic carved and gilded details (see figs. 1, 39). When any of these details appears alone or in combination on the same object, it is likely that Cook & Parkin or Richard Parkin working independently was the maker.
Furniture by Richard Parkin
A benchmark for identifying seating made by Parkin is a set of eleven chairs (probably at least twelve originally), all labeled “RICHARD PARKIN / CABINET – MAKER / EGYPTIAN HALL / 134 South Second Street / Philadelphia” (fig. 41). Their stay rails are triangular in shape, decorated with a carved anthemion, and surmount the rear seat rails. These features are unique in American seating but have precedents in Brown’s Rudiments of Drawing Cabinet Furniture (fig. 42) and a group of drawings inscribed “Tracings from Thomas Wilkinson from Designs of the late Mr. George Bullock, 1820” (fig. 43). Bullock was an ingenious artist of great renown and influence whose surviving work is unsurpassed in Regency furniture. His innovative use of indigenous material, inlays inspired by native plants and classical designs placed him at the forefront of British cabinetmakers of the period and garnered him important commissions from Sir Walter Scott, the Duke of Atholl, Matthew Robinson Bolton, and the Prince Regent for Napoleon Bonaparte’s residence on St. Helena. Bullock was active during the period when Cook and Parkin served their apprenticeships and worked as journeymen in England. It is likely that both of the future partners were familiar with Bullock’s furniture, an assertion supported by the similarity of chairs attributed to Parkin (fig. 41) and one illustrated in the Wilkinson Tracings. Another chair on the same page (upper right) could be the model for many sets of Philadelphia chairs, both with and without brass inlay (see fig. 43). Cook and Parkin’s apparent knowledge of Bullock’s designs suggests that they may have been the source for some of the Klismos-type chairs popular in Philadelphia throughout the 1820s.[37]
A number of Philadelphia chairs possibly made by Cook & Parkin or Richard Parkin working independently have die-stamped brass inlay, which is significant because Bullock was the most important exponent of Boulle work in English Regency furniture. Side chairs like the Parkin example illustrated in figure 41 indicate that he and Cook were familiar with Bullock’s designs (see fig. 43). Barry’s association with brass inlay can be traced in part to his September 11, 1824, notice in the American Daily Advertiser, where he offered for sale “2 Rich sideboards, Buhl work and richly carved.” Barry would have had the opportunity to study Boulle work while visiting London and Paris in 1811 and may have seen examples of Bullock’s furniture in his Grecian rooms at Egyptian Hall in Piccadilly, London, or Liverpool (fig. 44). If Barry was another conduit for Bullock’s designs, stylistic transfer could have occurred through collaboration with Parkin or through journeymen who may have worked for both men. Barry and Parkin are the only Philadelphia cabinetmakers known to have used cross-braces on the back upholstery frames of their chairs (fig. 45).
A pair of side chairs made of highly figured walnut and walnut veneer (fig. 1) provides a link between the set bearing Parkin’s label (fig. 41) and several undocumented chairs in public and private collections. The walnut chairs have legs identical to those on the labeled examples and rear stiles that terminate in stylized Ionic capitals with molded edges and paneled tablets like the chairs illustrated in figure 49. This leg design may have been inspired by a Gothic chair illustrated in plate 143 in Smith’s Guide (fig. 46), and the capitals are similar to those on a “Drawing Room State Chair” shown in plate 58 of his Household Furniture (fig. 47). Parkin is the only Philadelphia cabinetmaker known to have used these capitals, which appear on the chairs illustrated in figures 1, 45, and 50–52.[38]
The chairs illustrated in figures 48–52 have additional features indicative of Parkin’s work. The chair illustrated in figure 50 has large bosses with molded edges attached to the inner and outer faces of the front leg volutes, and all three chairs have small bosses glued to the round corners of the rectangular appliqués on their backs. Bosses similar to those on the chair shown in figure 51 also occur on a pair of footstools bearing Parkin’s Egyptian Hall label (fig. 53).[39]
A side chair possibly from Parkin’s shop (fig. 54) and a related example in maple with ebonized details represent a genre of seating traditionally attributed to Michel Bouvier, yet the turned and faceted legs relate closely to those on a pair of armchairs attributed to Parkin, and the tablet back is nearly identical to that on the chair illustrated in fig. 48. No documented Bouvier chairs share those details.[40]
As the occasional table illustrated in figure 56 suggests, furniture made by Parkin working independently and in partnership with Cook demonstrates a much stronger affinity with Hope’s designs than work by other American cabinetmakers. The design of this object appears to be inspired by a table illustrated in plate 12 of Hope’s Household Furniture (fig. 57), which had its roots in an ancient Roman marble bench drawn and published by Charles Heathcote Tatham in 1799 (fig. 58). The table, which bears Parkin’s label, has scrolled legs, an “Egyptian” marble top, and large flat bosses with molded edges.[41]
An unmarked sideboard with elaborate stenciled decoration may also be from Parkin’s shop (fig. 59). The original owners were probably Charles Henry Fisher (1814–1862) and his wife, Sarah (Atherton), who lived at Brookwood near Germantown, Pennsylvania. The supports of the sideboard are similar to those on the occasional table (fig. 56), the central stencil on its frieze is very closely related to that on the pier table bearing Cook & Parkin’s label (fig. 12), and the piece is decorated with bosses like those commonly used by their firm and Parkin working independently.[42]
The design of the Fisher sideboard is similar to that of an example that Quervelle sold Daniel and Martha Turnbull of St. Francisville, Louisiana, in 1830 (fig. 60). Although the Turnbulls’ sideboard was part of a suite, it bears no relation to the other forms. Indeed, the distinctive turned bosses on the sideboard suggest that Parkin was the maker. Quervelle may have needed assistance to complete his commission in a timely fashion and turned to Parkin, whose shop was less than a block away from his on South Second Street. Collaborations of this type were relatively common in the period. Alternatively, Quervelle could have simply retailed a sideboard made by Parkin, as Cook and Parkin did with a sofa table made by David Bodensick of Baltimore (fig. 61).[43]
Legacy
The furniture made by Thomas Cook and Richard Parkin reflects a thorough knowledge of English and French pattern-book designs and a level of patronage that allowed both men to work at the cutting edge of fashion. Unlike many of their competitors, who copied design book engravings, Cook and Parkin used published details selectively and combined them with their own innovative features. Cook and Parkin’s success at the beginning of the industrial age may have been predicated on size and volume, but it is clear from documented objects that their standard of quality was high and, in the finest pieces, as structurally and stylistically sophisticated as Philadelphia cabinetmakers had to offer. The shops where these men worked no longer stand, but their record of accomplishment remains in the novel and beautiful classical furniture that survives today.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
For assistance with this article, the author thanks Gavin Ashworth, Peter M. Kenny, and Alexandra A. Kirtley. I am especially grateful to Deborah Ducoff-Barone for her detailed research on Philadelphia cabinetmakers working in the classical style and Thomas Gordon Smith for his pioneering work on Cook & Parkin.
