1. The calculation of per free capita wealth is skewed in Charleston’s favor, for it omits slaves who made up approximately 50 percent of the population; however, when calculated as a per capita amount, Charleston’s wealth was still twice as great as New England and the Middle Colonies. For more on the economic history of South Carolina, see Peter A. Coclanis, The Shadow of a Dream: Economic Life and Death in the South Carolina Low Country, 1670–1920 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989); the statistics cited here are taken from pp. 116, 125. See also, Alice Hanson Jones, The Wealth of a Nation To Be: The American Colonies on the Eve of the Revolution (New York: Columbia University Press, 1980), pp. 54, 58, 380. Josiah Quincy, Memoir of the Life of Josiah Quincy Jun. of Massachusetts (Boston, 1825), p. 73. In 1860, the per capita wealth in Charleston was $800, in Massachusetts, $600, and in New York, $625. Coclanis, Shadow of a Dream, p. 128.
2. Charleston Courier, February 3, 1824.
3. For more on British furniture imported in Charleston, see Milby Burton, Charleston Furniture 1700–1825 (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1970), pp. 7–8, 13–16; M. Allison Carll, “An Assessment of English Furniture Imports into Charleston, South Carolina, 1760–1800,” Journal of Early Southern Decorative Arts 11, no. 2 (November 1985): 1–18; J. Thomas Savage, “The Miles Brewton House, Charleston, South Carolina: The Interior and Furnishings,” Antiques 143, no. 2 (February 1993): 300–7. For general information on British trade with Charleston after the American Revolution, see the chapter “The Return of the British Merchants,” in George C. Rogers, Jr., Evolution of a Federalist, William Loughton Smith of Charleston (1758–1812) (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1962), pp. 97–111. For more on the Charlestonian experience with the grand tour, see Maurie D. McInnis, “The Politics of Taste: Classicism in Charleston, 1815–1840” (Ph.D. dissertation, Yale University, 1996). John Drayton, A View of South-Carolina (Charleston, S.C.: W. P. Young, 1802), pp. 217, 221.
4. Mary Stead Pinckney to Margaret Izard Manigault, October 5, 1797, Manigault Papers, South Caroliniana Library, University of South Carolina, Columbia. Josephine du Pont to Margaret Izard Manigault, September 10, 1800, as quoted in Betty-Bright P. Low, “Of Muslins and Merveilleuses: Excerpts from the Correspondence of Josephine du Pont and Margaret Manigault,” Winterthur Portfolio 9 (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia for the Winterthur Museum, 1974), p. 66.
5. Margaret Izard Manigault to Alice Delancey Izard, November 25, 1808, Izard Papers, Library of Congress (hereinafter cited as IP, LC). Surviving furniture and probate inventories document Charleston’s enthusiasm for gilding, carving, and rosewood furniture. For example, Dr. Alexander Baron’s drawing room had “2 London made cane bottom sophas $50; 12 [London-made, cane-bottom] . . . chairs $120; 1 pr. Sattin wood card tables $20; 1 [pr. satinwood] . . . tea tables $10 . . . [and] 5 Window Curtains & Cornices London made, $250.” Although Charleston County inventories are not very descriptive, occasional notations indicate the prevalence of gilded seating furniture. Ed Power had “12 Green & gilt chairs $36” in his drawing room; Col. Charles W. Bulow had “12 gilt chairs” in his back parlor; William Lowndes had “12 Gilt chairs with cane bottoms, $18” in an unspecified room; and William Brisbane’s drawing room had “a rich guilt Grecian Sopha with damask Cushions $120; a dozen Chairs with damask Cushions $175” (Inventory of Dr. Alexander Baron, May 6, 1819, Charleston County Probate Court, Bk. F, 1819–1824, pp. 53–56; Inventory of Ed Power, May 24, 1819, Bk. F, 1819-1824, pp. 70-1; Inventory of Col. Charles W. Bulow, July 1823, Bk. F, 1819–1824, pp. 562–64; Inventory of William Lowndes, October 23, 1823, Bk. F, 1819–1824, pp. 582–83; Inventory of William Brisbane, 1822, Bk. F, 1819–1824, pp. 414–17, 495–98). Examples of painted and gilded English neoclassical furniture with Charleston histories include a set of nine armchairs (ca. 1800) with an Allston family history and a pair of armchairs (ca. 1805) with a Bacot family history, all in the collection of the Historic Charleston Foundation.
6. Charles Fraser, Reminiscences of Charleston (1854; reprint ed., Charleston, S.C.: Garnier & Company, 1969), p. 14.
7. Margaret Izard Manigault to Alice Delancey Izard, February 5, 1809, March 12, 1809, December 22, 1811, IP, LC.
8. Isaac Coffin to the Misses Pinckney, July 12, 1817, Charles Cotesworth Pinckney Papers, LC; this set of Gillows chairs is in a private collection. The Barelli, Torre & Co. advertisement is in the Charleston Courier, March 20, 1819. For Woddrop’s advertisements, see the Charleston Courier, January 6, 1818; January 19, 1819; January 1, 1820; January 8, 1820; February 19, 1821. For more on the 1824 tariff, see William W. Freehling, Prelude to Civil War: The Nullification Controversy in South Carolina, 1816–1836 (New York: Harper & Row, 1966), pp. 106–8; and Rogers, Evolution of a Federalist, pp. 374–76. J. N. Cardazo, Reminiscences of Charleston (Charleston, S.C.: Joseph Walker, 1866), pp. 11–13.
9. Charleston Courier, October 23, 1815. Information concerning the marketing of furniture in Charleston was derived from the city’s newspaper advertisements and U.S. Bureau of Customs, Outward Coastwise Manifests, District of Philadelphia (hereinafter cited as USBC, OCM, DP). Unfortunately similar records do not survive for New York, but one assumes that the early channels of distribution were similar. For more on the extent of Philadelphia’s coastwise and foreign trade, see U.S. Bureau of Customs, Outward Coastwise Manifests, District of Philadelphia, Record Group 36–1059, National Archives, Washington, D.C.; and Kathleen M. Catalano, “Cabinetmaking in Philadelphia 1820–1840: Transition from Craft to Industry,” in American Furniture and Its Makers, Winterthur Portfolio 13, edited by Ian M. G. Quimby (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1979), pp. 81–91.
10. Charleston Courier, January 3, 1816 (Gamage); January 23, 1816 (Davenport); January 6, 1818 (Stagg).
11. Charleston Courier, February 8, 1816. City Gazette and Commercial Daily Advertiser, June 16, 1820.
12. City Gazette and Commercial Daily Advertiser, January 1, 1819 (Everitt). Charleston Courier, January 1, 1819 (Budd). The New York directories list John L. Everitt as a cabinetmaker from 1808 to 1837 and John Budd from 1819 until 1844. The authors thank Peter M. Kenny and Deborah Dependahl Waters for this information.
13. The fire in Rawson’s wareroom was reported in the Charleston Courier, February 21, 1820. Advertisements indicate that Rawson stocked a full range of furniture including bureaus, sideboards, bedsteads, chairs, and breakfast, tea, and card tables. His advertisements usually mentioned that the furniture was from the north, but they did not specify Providence. Rawson’s Charleston label is on a sideboard (Museum of Early Southern Decorative Arts [hereinafter cited as MESDA] research file S-14321) and a set of drawers with a dressing glass published in Paul H. Borroughs, Southern Antiques (New York: Bonanza Books, 1931), pp. 147, 158. For more on William Rawson’s association with Charleston, see Forsyth M. Alexander, “Cabinet Warehousing in the Southern Atlantic Ports, 1783–1820,” Journal of Early Southern Decorative Arts 15, no. 2 (November 1989): 28. For a comparison of the amount of furniture shipped from Philadelphia to various U.S. cities, see Catalano, “Cabinetmaking in Philadelphia,” p. 83.
14. For more on warehousing in the South, see Alexander, “Cabinet Warehousing,” pp. 1–42. Information about Philadelphia furniture imports was compiled from USBC, OCM, DP, for 1821, 1826, 1831, and 1836.
15. Charleston Courier, January 2, 1817; Charleston Courier, January 3, 1818; Charleston Courier, February 17, 1818. For other advertisements by Otis, see Charleston Courier, January 8, 1818, January 31, 1818, and March 31, 1818. For Van Nostrand, see Charleston Courier, March 13, 1819. “Van Nostrand” may have been either Samuel Van Nostrand who is listed in the New York directories in 1819, 1821, 1823, and 1824, or Jacob Van Nostrand who is listed in the New York directories from 1812 to 1817 and from 1819 to 1825. No information on the carver named “Christie” is known. The authors thank Peter M. Kenny for this information.
16. The evolution of the furniture industry in Philadelphia is discussed in Catalano, “Cabinetmaking in Philadelphia,” pp. 87–91. For more on the decline of the Charleston cabinetmaking trade, see McInnis, “The Politics of Taste,” chapter six.
17. For information on Gouldsmith and Sheridan, see Burton, Charleston Furniture, pp. 93, 94, 120. For Sheridan’s advertisements, see Charleston Courier, March 14, 1827, and Charleston Courier, March 3, 1828.
18. Charleston Courier, February 20, 1820; Charleston Courier, April 3, 1824. In a public address, artist Charles Fraser lamented the fashion for visiting the north and buying northern goods:
Not to speak of the fascinations which annually draw into their vortex so many of our fellow citizens, and so much of our money—not to speak of the preference given to Northern workmen by the votaries of fashion—not to mention that reliance upon their labour for almost every article of use, which paralyzes industry at home.
See Charles Fraser, An Address delivered before the Citizens of Charleston, and the Grand Lodge of South-Carolina, at the Laying of the Corner Stone of a new College Edifice, with Masonic Ceremonies, on the 12th January, 1828 (Charleston: J. S. Burges, 1828), p. 17. For more on the Nullification crisis and its effect on the artisan community, see William H. and Jane H. Pease, The Web of Progress: Private Values and Public Styles in Boston and Charleston, 1828–1843 (Athens, Ga.: University of Georgia Press, 1991); Freehling, Prelude to Civil War; and McInnis, “The Politics of Taste,” chapter six.
19. Charleston Courier, February 15, 1817.
20. Alicia Hopton Russell Middleton to Euretta Barnewall Middleton, July 31, 1834, Cheves-Middleton Papers, South Carolina Historical Society, Charleston (hereinafter cited as SCHS).
21. Sarah Elliott Huger to Harriott Pinckney Horry, March 17, 1812, Mrs. St. Julien Ravenel Family Papers (hereinafter cited as SJRFP), SCHS.
22. Sarah Elliott Huger to Harriott Pinckney Horry, October 15, 1812, Anna Wells Rutledge Papers, SCHS.
23. Mary I’on Lowndes married Frederick Rutledge Kinloch, March 16, 1816. Harriott Pinckney Horry Rutledge to Harriott Pinckney Horry, September 20, 1815, SJRFP.
24. The Paris firm, J. Boris, Antiquités Longchamp, 83 Rue de Longchamp, offered a set of labeled Ellis & Wheaton fancy chairs of curled maple in 1991. The label reads:
ellis & wheaton, Fancy Chair Manufacturers, No. 15 Bowery-Lane, Keep constantly on hand a large and elegant assortment of Japan Furniture, Settees, Couches, Rocking, Sewing and Fancy Chairs. Orders thankfully received, and carefully executed. N.B. Old Chairs repaired, painted, and gilt, in the newest fashion and on the lowest terms.
The label is dated “Oct. 26 1816” and signed by Stephen Wheaton, with the following handwritten invoice: “Mr. Westfield/ Ten Curl mapel [sic] fancy Chairs at $5.50 each/ Eight Ball Do. at $5/ to painting 8 winsor [sic] Chairs/ to painting fancy Do./ $104.50” (J. Boris to Deborah Dependahl Waters, Curator of Decorative Arts, Museum of the City of New York, December 13, 1991). For more on Wheaton, see Charles Montgomery, American Furniture, The Federal Period (New York: Viking Press, 1966), p. 457. Sarah Elliott Huger to Harriott Pinckney Horry, October 21, 1815, SJRFP.
25. Sarah Huger had previously commissioned tables from Duncan Phyfe for her brother-in-law John Wells, who wrote to her on July 25, 1815: “select a carpet for our two lower rooms with proper tables for the front room and a tea-table for the back room. Chairs will also be wanting.... The tables you will get better at Phyfe’s than elsewhere” (as quoted in Nancy McClelland, Duncan Phyfe and the English Regency 1795–1830 [New York: William R. Scott, Inc., 1939], pp. 304–7). Sarah Elliott Huger to Harriott Pinckney Horry, January 4, 1816, and March 5, 1816, SJRFP.
26. Despite this advice, surviving furniture and probate inventories indicate that the card table remained an extremely popular item of furniture throughout the period covered in this article. Sarah Elliott Huger to Harriott Pinckney Horry, March 5, 1816, SJRFP.
27. Benjamin Huger Papers, n.d., South Caroliniana Library, University of South Carolina. For another example of New York furniture ordered for a South Carolinian, see Elizabeth D. English, “House Furnishings of the 1830’s As Described in the Letters of Martha Keziah Peay,” South Carolina Historical and Genealogical Magazine 43, no. 2 (April 1942): 69–87. Martha Keziah Peay wrote on September 2, 1830, enclosing a list for furniture that included:
2 Pier Tables & 1 Centre Table/ 1 Tea Table - 2 Foot Stools/ 2 Grecian Sofas (with elastic bottoms)/ 1 set Dining Tables/ 1 Side Board (with marble top)/ 1 Secretary and Bookcase/ 2 Candle Stands/ 1 Large handsomely carved Bed Stead/ 2 Perfectly Plain Bed Steads/ 2 Wash Stands - One suitable for the carved Bedstead, & the other plain/ 1 Dressing Table - 1 Easy Chair for chamber/ 1 Wardrobe (with a recess on one side for hanging up dresses)/ 1 Set Cane bottom Chairs for Drawing Room.
Eventually, part of the furniture order was diverted to Philadelphia through the help of Mrs. William Chaloner. On December 8, 1830, Peay’s furniture was shipped from New York to the care of John Robinson, her father’s Charleston factor, with bills of lading and invoices from New York cabinetmaker Alexander P. W. Kinnan for the pier tables, a center table, two sofas, a work table, a tea table, and a pair of benches, totaling $426.00; and from the looking glass maker Charles Del Vecchio for two pier glasses and a chimney glass, totaling $82.00. The goods were shipped by steamboat from Charleston to Columbia, South Carolina, on January 13, 1831.
28. Albert Sack, Fine Points of Furniture: Early American (New York: Crown Publishers, Inc., 1950), p. 61, illustrates one of the Middleton family chairs and identifies it as made for Arthur Middleton (1742–1787), a signer of the Declaration of Independence; however, the set was probably made for his nephew, Arthur Middleton (1785–1837) and Alicia Hopton Russell Middleton (1789–1840) of Bolton Plantation. “Middleton of South Carolina,” South Carolina Historical and Genealogical Magazine 1, no. 3 (July 1900): 242–45, 253–55. For more on these chairs, see Katherine Gross Farnham, “Living with Antiques: The Gordon-Banks House in the Georgia Piedmont,” Antiques 102, no. 3 (September 1972): 432–50. The Read family recamier is illustrated and discussed in Farnham, “Living with Antiques,” pp. 432–50. “Middleton of South Carolina,” p. 248.
29. For more on the Wickham and Bosley tables, see Wendy A. Cooper, Classical Taste in America, 1800–1840 (New York: Abbeville Press, 1993) pp. 170–71; and Newark Museum, Classical America 1815–1845 (Newark, N.J.: Baker Printing Co., 1963), pp. 36–37, 74.
30. The quotation is taken from a labeled card table, MESDA research file S-8866. Evidence from directory listings and other sources suggests that Bulkley resided in Charleston and Deming remained in New York.
31. Deming and Bulkley’s first advertisement is in the City Gazette and Commercial Daily Advertiser, January 5, 1818. Other advertisements appeared in the Gazette on March 10, 1818, and in the Charleston Courier on June 3, 1818. Bulkley sold his first shipment at the store of Henry Loomis, identified as a “hardware merchant” in The Directory and Stranger’s Guide for the City of Charleston (Charleston: Schenckand Turner, 1819), p. 62; Charleston Courier, December 28, 1818. City Gazette and Commercial Daily Advertiser, November 22, 1819. Charleston was marked by seasonal rhythms. In the winter, especially from January to March, planters lived in town, and the city was crowded and active. In the summer, many residents left for cooler climes. Although escaping the heat of Charleston’s near tropical climate was part of the reason, the strongest motivation was the various fevers (yellow fever, “stanger’s fever,” etc.) that tended to plague the city during the summer months. Bulkley’s yearly excursions to New York were consistent with this movement.
32. The authors thank Peter M. Kenny for the New York directory references to Deming and Bulkley. From 1805 to 1809, Deming was in business with William Turner. From 1810 to 1820 he is listed alone at various addresses, and from 1820 to 1826 (the last year of Kenny’s research) Deming is listed with Bulkley. The family genealogy is outlined in Donal Lines Jacobus, The Bulkeley Genealogy (New Haven, Ct.: privately published, 1933), pp. 658, 661, 663. Simeon Deming is best known for a sideboard he made for Governor Oliver Wolcott (1726–1797) of Connecticut (J. Michael Flanigan, American Furniture from the Kaufman Collection [Washington: National Gallery of Art, 1986], pp. 208–11).
33. City Gazette and Commercial Advertiser, June 28, 1821. Charleston Courier, June 24, 1822.
34. Charleston Courier, March 7, 1820 (Rawson); Charleston Courier, January 1, 1826 (Sheridan). City Gazette and Commercial Daily Advertiser, November 20, 1820 (Deming and Bulkley).
35. Charleston Courier, April 12, 1820. City Gazette and Commercial Daily Advertiser, November 20, 1820. Pauline Agius, Ackermann’s Regency Furniture and Interiors (Ramsbury, England: Crowood Press, 1984), pp. 18, 27. The issues of Rudolph Ackermann, The Repository of Arts, Literature, Commerce, Manufactures, Fashions and Politics from which the above quotations are drawn are vol. 1, no. 2, pl. 38 (December 1809): 411; vol. 1, no. 5, pl. 16 (March 1811): 222; vol. 2, no. 1, pl. 20 (April 1816): 244; vol. 2, no. 11, pl. 9 (February 1821): 128.
36. The authors thank Peter M. Kenny for information on the New York advertisements. New York Evening Post, October 7, 1819, and July 22, 1820.
37. Huger’s purchases are documented by receipts dated May 29, 1821, and May 14, 1832, Bacot-Huger Papers, SCHS. Charleston Courier, January 24, 1838. The success of Deming and Bulkley is also supported by the rather substantial number of surviving receipts, greater than for any other cabinetmaker, retailer, or warehouser of furniture in Charleston from 1815–1840. Of the forty-one surviving receipts for furniture purchased in Charleston from 1815–1840, twelve (30 percent) are for the firm of Deming and Bulkley. Five receipts (12 percent) survive for Cowperthwait, four (9 percent) for Richard Gouldsmith, and four (9 percent) for William Enston. The remainder are scattered between ten other cabinetmakers and retailers. Out of fourteen entries in account books for cabinetmakers and retailers, Deming and Bulkley are listed in four separate entries (30 percent). For Hugh Swinton Ball’s inventory, see Charleston County Probate Inventories, Bk. H, 1834–1844, pp. 326–30, 359–65, August 29, 1838. Washington Allston’s Spalatro and the Bloody Hand is discussed in William H. Gerdts and Theodore E. Stebbins, Jr., “A Man of Genius,” The Art of Washington Allston (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1979), p. 151.
38. The authors thank Wendy A. Cooper for bringing this table and letter to their attention. Deming and Bulkley to S[tephen] D. Miller, April 26, 1829, Charleston, Chestnut Family Papers (microfilm edition, 1979), State Historical Society of Wisconsin. Thomas Hope, Household Furniture and Interior Decoration, with introduction by David Watkin (1807, reprint ed., New York: Dover, 1971). For more on gilding techniques, see Donald L. Fennimore, “Gilding Practices and Processes in Nineteenth-Century American Furniture,” and Cynthia Moyer, “Conservation Treatments for Border and Freehand Gilding and Bronze-Powder Stenciling and Freehand Bronze,” in American Institute of Conservators, Gilded Wood: Conservation and History (Madison, Ct.: Sound View Press, 1991), pp. 139–51, 332–34.
39. The bodies of the swans on the skirt of the Deming and Bulkley table are similar to those on a stand in plate 21 of Hope’s Household Furniture, but the fountain from which they are drinking is more like that on a dressing glass in plate 14. The trade catalogue is in the Victoria & Albert Museum, press no. M61e. A pier table labeled by Joseph Barry (Metropolitan Museum of Art) has a nearly identical ormolu mount (Jillian Ehninger, “With the Richest Ornaments Just Imported from France: Ornamental Hardware on Boston, New York, and Philadelphia Furniture, 1800-1840” [master’s thesis, University of Delaware, 1992]).The decoration trailing the swans is similar to that behind a pair of winged lions drinking from a fountain in plate 15 of Hope’s Household Furniture.
40. The quotation appears in Nathaniel Whittock, The Decorative Painters’ and Glaziers’ Guide (London, 1827), p. 20, and is taken from John Morley, Regency Design, 1790–1840 (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1993), p. 409. For more on the technique used to produce such borders, see Moyer, “Conservation Treatments for Border and Freehand Gilding,” p. 332. Lyres abound in the design books of the period and are especially prevalent in Thomas Hope’s Household Furniture.
41. Although it is possible that General Pinckney acquired these tables late in life (his second wife was considerably younger than he), they were probably purchased by his son. Colonel Pinckney purchased furniture from Deming and Bulkley in 1828. Colonel Pinckney’s house on Broad Street was one of the most elaborate residences built in Charleston in the 1820s. The drawing room was on the second floor—an arrangement common in Charleston. That room extended across the front of the house and had extremely bold and deeply carved woodwork. The ceiling was sixteen feet high. The payment to Deming and Bulkley is recorded in Colonel Thomas Pinckney’s account book with his factors, North, Webb & Osborne (Colonel Thomas Pinckney Estate Account Book, Charleston Library Society.) The furniture in Pinckney’s Broad Street house was valued at $2,965.50, whereas that at his rice plantation, Fairfield, was valued at only $170. This difference provides a clear indication of the contrast between the utilitarian nature of the furnishings at his plantation home and the elaborate nature of the furnishings at his Charleston home, where Pinckney is known to have entertained lavishly during Charleston’s social season. If these tables were purchased by General Thomas Pinckney and used at his plantation, El Dorado, as oral tradition maintains, then they may have been the “1 pair Square Card Tables” listed in his wife’s inventory taken in 1843 (Charleston County Probate, Bk. A, 1839–1844, pp. 425–31).
42. A center table illustrated in Cooper, Classical Taste in America, p. 128, is decorated with elaborate freehand gilding, cut-brass inlay, and carving. Although not as elaborate as the Deming and Bulkley examples, it is described as “indicative of the most expensive New York workmanship.” Charleston Courier, February 3, 1824. See George Smith, Ornamental Designs after the Antique (London, 1812); Rudolph Ackermann, Selection of Ornaments (London, 1817–1819); Thomas King, Designs for Carving and Gilding (London, ca. 1830); and Nathaniel Whittock, The Decorative Painters’ and Glaziers’ Guide (London, 1827). There are close parallels between Deming and Bulkley’s work and several plates reproduced from design books in Frances Collard, Regency Furniture (Woodbridge, Eng.: Antique Collectors’ Club, 1985).
43. For more on this related group of dolphin tables, see J. L. Sibley Jennings, Dolphin Tales: The Discovery of Related Southern Furniture of Exceptional Quality and Northern Mis-Attribution, or, Move Over Lannuier (Washington, D.C.: by the author, 1990). Although the authors disagree with Jennings’s conclusions regarding the origin of this group, his research was vital in grouping these pieces and determining their provenances. City Gazette and Commercial Daily Advertiser, April 11, 1820 and November 20, 1820. For more information on the Wragg card table, see Jennings, Dolphin Tales, p. 15.
44. For a French piece with ormolu mounts and an American history, see Cooper, Classical Taste in America, fig. 44. Ormolu mounts were often imitated by English cabinetmakers. Thomas Hope recommended the use of inlay instead of ormolu because inlay would not attract as much dirt and dust. Frances Collard, Regency Furniture, p. 93. Ormolu mounts were occasionally used but were more frequently imitated on American furniture. For other New York spread eagle card tables, see David L. Barquist, American Tables and Looking Glasses in the Mabel Brady Garvan and Other Collections at Yale University (New Haven, Ct.: Yale University Art Gallery, 1992), pp. 225–30.
45. For more on penwork, see Fennimore, “Gilding Practices,” p. 147.
46. For more on the popularity of dolphins in nineteenth-century classical American furniture, see Cooper, Classical Taste in America, p. 150. The authors would like to thank David Beevers, Keeper of Preston Manor, Brighton, England, for information about the furniture made for Greenwich Hospital, now part of the collection of the Royal Pavilion, Brighton.
47. The recamier descended in the family of Colonel William Washington of Charleston. Notes made by Anna Wells Rutledge indicate that its mate was exactly the same, only reversed (Anna Wells Rutledge Papers, SCHS).
48. Vestry minutes, November 10, 1821, St. John’s Lutheran Church. Inventory of Joseph Yates, 1823, Charleston County Probate Court, Bk. F, 1819–1824, pp. 495–98.
49. Deming and Bulkley’s relatively liberal credit policy is documented by these two surviving bills. The 1825 bill records the purchase of the sideboard ($90) and the card tables ($75) in August and the sofa ($95) in November. Lucas paid for all of the items in late November. The 1828 bill for $186.30, which also spanned several months, was partially paid for by barrels of rice instead of cash. Photographs of the bills are in MESDA research files S-8624 and S-8624a. It is likely that Deming and Bulkley did not manufacture their own fancy chairs but instead purchased them from other makers. Beginning in 1826, they received shipments of chairs from Philadelphia chairmaker David Lindal. For specific shipments see USBC, OCM, DP, November 4, 1826; March 9, 1827; June 2, 1827; July 23, 1827; November 21, 1827; January 8, 1828; July 11, 1828; and June 4, 1831. The chairs were probably decorated by Deming and Bulkley’s workmen.
50. MESDA research files S-8866, S-13560.
51. Neo-Classical Furniture Designs, a reprint of Thomas King’s “Modern Style of Cabinet Work Exemplified,” introduction by Thomas Gordon Smith (New York: Dover, 1995).
52. William Aiken was the son of a Scots-Irish immigrant. He served as a state legislator, senator, and governor and was a member of the U.S. House of Representatives. A visitor to his plantation estimated that Aiken owned between 700 and 800 slaves (Charleston Courier, July 19, 1844). For more on the Aiken-Rhett house, see William Nathaniel Banks, “The Aiken-Rhett House, Charleston, South Carolina,” Antiques 139, no. 1 (January 1991): 234–45. Francis Kinloch Middleton to Francis Kinloch, February 24, 1839, Charleston, Cheves-Middleton Papers, SCHS.
53. Charleston Directory and Stranger’s Guide (Charleston, S.C.: T. C. Fay, 1840) p. 12. The authors are grateful to Deborah Dependahl Waters and Peter M. Kenny for sharing information on Deming and Bulkley in New York City directories and tax assessment books in the New York City Municipal Archives. Katherine S. Howe, Alice Cooney Frelinghuysen, Catherine Hoover Voorsanger, et al., Herter Brothers: Furniture and Interiors for a Gilded Age (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1994), pp. 39–40, 63, 225–26. |