1. Lloyd papers, ms. 2001, Maryland Historical Society, Baltimore (hereafter cited as MHS). The Lloyds’ patronage of furniture craftsmen is detailed in Alexandra A. Alevizatos, “‘Procured of the best and Most Fashionable Materials:’ The Furniture and Furnishings of the Edward Lloyd Family, 1750–1850” (M.A. thesis, University of Delaware, 1999). The Lloyds purchased a small amount of furniture from Annapolis cabinetmakers John Shaw (in 1801, 1804, 1809, and 1811) and Washington G. Tuck. They also purchased coffins and farm implements from Easton, Maryland, cabinetmakers James and Joseph Neale. Other Baltimore cabinetmakers patronized by the Lloyds were fancy furniture makers John and Hugh Finlay and chairmakers John Oldham, William Singleton, and Jacob Daley. The value of the objects purchased from the aforementioned artisans was minimal. Federal Gazette (Baltimore), June 28, 1817.
2. Priestley’s obituary in the March 14, 1837, issue of the Baltimore American states that his mother Mary Ann was forty-one and “aged and helpless” in 1790. The age given for her was incorrect for she was eighty-five at her death in 1835. Mary Ann Priestley (Priestly, Pressley) was listed as the ship’s nurse for the colonial frigate Defence and as a widow with no wealth in the 1783 tax assessment for Annapolis, Maryland. See Appendix B in Edward C. Papenfuse, In Pursuit of Profit: Annapolis Merchants in the Era of the American Revolution (1763–1805) (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1975.) As quoted in “A New Yorker in Maryland in 1793 and 1824,” Maryland Historical Magazine 47, no. 2 (June 1952): 139. Kent also noted that Baltimore had the most elegant dancing assembly room in the United States. The building containing this room also housed the Library Company of Baltimore, which owned furniture design books. Many Baltimore cabinetmakers were members of the Library Company.
3. The Baltimore Directory (Baltimore: Warner & Hannah Publishers, 1800–1801), p. 22. No residence for Edward Priestley or his mother is listed until 1802. Presumably they lived with a relative or friend prior to that date. Two other Priestleys are documented in Maryland during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. James Priestley, principal of the Baltimore Academy, lived on St. Paul Street from 1798 to 1808. Perrigrine Priestley lived in Talbot County (Baltimore Directory [Baltimore: James Robinson, 1804]). “Baltimore Town” referred to the area west of the Jones Falls. Baltimore Town was distinguished from Fell’s Point, which was east of the Jones Falls on the water, and Old Town or Jones Town, which was east of the Jones Falls and north of Fell’s Point. Court Proceedings of Baltimore County, liber wb3, folio 36, Maryland State Archives (hereafter cited as MSA), Annapolis. John Henry Hill, “Baltimore Furniture Craftsmen, 1783–1824” (M.A. thesis, University of Delaware, 1968), p. 47. The only record of Kirby is the indenture between him and Minskey.
4. The Telegraph and Daily Advertiser (Baltimore), October 18, 1802. Hill, “Baltimore Furniture Craftsmen,” p. 99. Chairmaking did not include large sofas, such as classical Grecian sofas that were constructed of three separately joined frames. See Margaret Burke Clunie, “Salem Federal Furniture” (M.A. thesis, University of Delaware, 1976). Priestley and Minskey never referred to themselves as warehousemen, although they clearly maintained a stock in trade. Furniture warehouses first appeared in Baltimore in 1784, when London-trained cabinetmaker Richard Lawson and his partner John Bankson advertised their own stock along with imported furniture. Most Baltimore cabinetmakers working before the War of 1812 did not maintain large inventories.
5. Although Minskey may have profited from the firm’s involvement in the furniture export trade, Priestley’s name appears exclusively in the Savannah advertisements and he evidently oversaw this aspect of the business. See Gregory R. Weidman, Furniture in Maryland, 1740–1940: The Collection of the Maryland Historical Society (Baltimore: Maryland Historical Society, 1984), pp. 76, 87. McColm worked as an independent tradesman in the cabinetmaking shop of Coleman & Taylor.
6. This venture represents Priestley’s only documented foray into the furniture export trade. Considering his subsequent involvement in the coastal lumber trade, it is possible that he continued to export furniture. Philadelphia cabinetmaker Joseph B. Barry (fl. 1797–1833) also endeavored to sell furniture in Savannah. His venture, which began in October 1798, lasted only one month. In February 1803, Barry opened a shop at 130 Baltimore Street in Baltimore. The following month, he moved his business to Light Street near Priestley and Minskey. Barry closed his Baltimore shop early in 1804. Having failed to break into other markets, Barry also began selling lumber. Donald L. Fennimore and Robert T. Trump, “Joseph B. Barry, Philadelphia Cabinetmaker,” Antiques 135, no. 5 (May 1989): 1215–17.
7. Baltimore Street was also known as Market Street. Priestley’s advertisement in the Georgia Republican and State Intelligencer continued to run weekly through April 18, 1803. James Robinson, The Baltimore Directory for 1804 (Baltimore: Warner & Hanna Publishers, 1804), p. 1. Priestley and Minskey’s Baltimore Street shop had been occupied by cabinetmaker James Davidson (fl. 1783–1806) from 1796 until his death in 1806. Baltimore American, November 3, 1806. After Davidson’s death, his wife Margaret attempted to maintain the cabinetmaking business but eventually sold the shop to Priestley and Minskey. Their business was enhanced by two chairmakers—Jacob Daley and Francis Younker (fl. 1807–1833). Both had apprenticed to Richard Sweeney (fl. 1796–1837), one of the local chairmakers associated with James Davidson. Daley and Younker moved into Sweeney’s shop shortly after Davidson moved his business to Old Town in 1807. Daley was a trustee of Priestley’s estate and the guardian of his children. Younker is listed as a chairmaker at 4 Baltimore Street from 1810 to 1824. Evidently he was producing and selling chairs from Priestley’s shop. Hill, “Baltimore Furniture Craftsmen,” pp. 62, 64, 105, 159. For more on Jacob Daley and Richard Sweeney’s apprentices, see Nancy Goyne Evans, American Windsor Chairs (New York: Hudson Hills Press for the Winterthur Museum, 1996), pp. 164–72, 690, 712. Daley had more apprentices than any one chairmaker in Baltimore. Although he worked for several prominent Maryland patrons including the Lloyds, Daley only marked a few chairs, and his career remains fairly obscure.
8. Orphan’s Court Proceedings of Baltimore County (1798–1803), liber 4, folio 206, MSA. Pringle may have guaranteed Priestley and Minskey when they first sought capital and support for their business. See Stuart Weems Bruchey, Robert Oliver, Merchant of Baltimore, 1783–1819 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Studies in Historical and Political Science, series 74, no. 1, 1956), p. 125; and J. Thomas Scharf, Chronicles of Baltimore (Baltimore: Turnbull Brothers, 1874), pp. 230, 288. Orphan’s Court Proceedings of Baltimore County (1805–1808), liber 6, folio 220, MSA. Orphan’s Court Proceedings of Baltimore County (1805–1808), liber 6, folio 270, MSA. Hutton and Plaines were the only apprentices who subsequently established their own cabinetmaking shops. Only 13 percent of all apprentices bound to Baltimore cabinetmakers between 1783 and 1824 became shop masters. For more on apprenticeship agreements in Baltimore, see Hill, “Baltimore Furniture Craftsmen,” p. 47.
9. Hill, “Baltimore Furniture Craftsmen,” pp. 140–41.
10. Minskey took orphan Morgan Hill as an apprentice in 1810. Minskey died on March 14, 1819, leaving a wife and three young children. His obituary appeared in the Baltimore American on April 1, 1819. No furniture or orders pertaining to Priestley and Minskey are known; however, Edward Lloyd V was dealing with Priestley during his partnership with Minskey.
11. American and Commercial Daily Advertiser (Baltimore), November 20, 1807. This is the first reference to Priestley selling lumber. Baltimore Evening Post, August 12, 1808; Whig, August 24, 1808.
12. Many Baltimore cabinetmakers opened warehouses during Baltimore’s economic boom following the War of 1812. William Camp maintained a wareroom on Concord Street and John Howe maintained the Baltimore Carpet, Furniture and Looking Glass Warehouse on Calvert Street. The profusion of advertisements for furniture warehouses suggests that many cabinetmakers increased their labor force in order to mass-produce stock items. Federal Gazette (Baltimore), June 28, 1817. In the Baltimore Directory and Register for 1814–15 (Baltimore: J. C. O’Reilly, 1814) Priestley’s business is referred to as a “chair and cabinetmaking shop.”
13. Priestley took William Sefton, a seventeen-year-old orphan, in February 1808 (Orphan’s Court Proceedings of Baltimore County [1805–1808], liber 6, folio 305, MSA); John Howlett, a fourteen year old, in March 1808 (Baltimore County Register of Wills [Indentures], 1806–1808, folio 423); and brothers Henry and William Stewart, aged sixteen and eighteen, respectively, in April 1808 (Orphan’s Court Proceedings of Baltimore County [1805–1808], liber 6, folio 316, MSA). Howlett ran away in 1814, eight months before his term ended (American and Commercial Daily Advertiser, March 18, 1815). Hill, “Baltimore Furniture Craftsmen,” pp. 45, 62. From June 1807 to October 1808, Priestley housed, fed, clothed, and employed James Hasitland, receiving sixty dollars from the latter’s “benefactor” Edward Lloyd V. In an 1808 letter to Lloyd, Priestley expressed his desire to take Hasitland as an apprentice. Hasitland’s status remains unclear, but he may have been a slave, free black, or indentured white (Lloyd Papers, ms. 2001, microfilm reel 25, MHS). Similarly, no official apprenticeship document survives for Levin Pritchett (Prichard). In 1818, Priestley advertised that Pritchett ran away from his shop where he was “an apprentice to the Cabinet Business” (American and Commercial Daily Advertiser, March 26, 1818). Priestley and Pritchett must have reconciled for Priestley subsequently extended Pritchett credit and leased him property. Priestley advertised for “three or four laborers” in the July 21, 1809, issue of the Whig. He also reported that he had “on hand a large quantity of mahogany furniture which he will dispose of on accommodating terms.”
14. “John Needles (1786–1878): An Autobiography,” edited by Edward Needles Wright, Journal of Quaker History 58, no. 1 (Spring 1969): 13.
15. The letter is in the Municipal Archives, City of Baltimore, Bureau of Legislative Reference, ms. 1805 (364), February 15, 1816. For more on Lusby, see Alevizatos, “The Furniture and Furnishings of the Edward Lloyd Family,” pp. 73–74, 216–17. Priestley and Roney served together in the War of 1812.
16. There are several plausible explanations for Priestley’s not appearing on the federal censuses taken in 1800, 1810, 1820, and 1830. Although unlikely, he may simply have been overlooked. Alternatively, Priestley may have distrusted the federal government and intentionally eluded the census takers. See Priestley’s letter to the editor in the Baltimore Whig, June 12, 1813. The author thanks her sister Dorothy for suggesting legal reasons why Priestley may have avoided the census.
17. Matchett’s Baltimore Directories, (Baltimore: R. J. Matchett, 1820–1840). Scott is listed at Priestley’s address in Matchett’s Baltimore Directory for 1824 (Baltimore: R. J. Matchett, 1824). Hill, “Baltimore Furniture Craftsmen,” pp. 54, 89, 108, 126. In 1826, Priestley hired William Roney to turn the newel posts he supplied for Wye House. Although no documentation survives, Priestley may also have patronized carver and gilder James Fraser who worked out of 2 Baltimore Street in 1812.
18. Sale of William Camp, January 3, 1823, account of sales, Baltimore County, liber wb8.
19. Priestley’s estate included 91,113 feet of various types of plank; 3,666 feet of mahogany veneer; 200 feet of satinwood veneer; 506 feet of mahogany logs; and 2 slabs of wood. The plank included pine, mahogany, cherry, poplar, bay wood, and “mixed.”
20. American and Commercial Daily Advertiser, November 20, 1807. Chancery Court of Baltimore City, liber 116, p. 527, MSA, Annapolis. Hill, “Baltimore Furniture Craftsmen,” p. 151.
21. American and Commercial Daily Advertiser, February 23, 1811; March 12, 1816; and December 4, 1819.
22. The Whig (Baltimore), July 21, 1809. For Fisher’s notice, see American and Commercial Daily Advertiser, March 30, 1810. For Brown’s notice, see Federal Gazette, March 18, 1815.
23. Boglap Street no longer exists in Baltimore. The author thanks Sharon Woodward, president of the Baltimore Equitable Society, for providing information on Priestley’s policy. Priestley maintained the policy until his death in 1837.
24. William H. Bates was a coachmaker, Griffith Evans was a cooper, J. Sleppy and Edward Dowling were carpenters, and Timothy Richards was a wheelwright.
25. Although Priestley could have sold furniture through commission merchants and auctioneers, it is more likely that the debts to his estate reflect purchases by the principals of the companies specified. The only businesses that owed Priestley money were the Merchants Bank and Friendship Fire Company, of which Priestley was a member. Richard Lemmon, the auctioneer at Robt. Lemmon & Co., and James Gittings of Merryman & Gittings had open accounts, as did commission merchants James Thompson of O’Donnell’s Wharf, Lambert Gittings, Hugh Bolton of Stewart & Bolton, and Charles Karthaus, who imported wares and sold pianos made by John Gieb at his merchant house. Karthaus, Kurtz & Co.; Joseph Tucker; and William Barr and James Armour all owned dry goods merchant shops at 73, 59, and 53 Baltimore Street, respectively. American and Commercial Daily Advertiser, June 9, 1819.
26. Edward Lloyd V served as a United States congressman from 1806 to 1808, as governor of Maryland from 1809 to 1811, and as a United States senator from 1819 to 1826. As the sixth proprietor of Wye House, he was the largest producer of wheat in Maryland when he died in 1834. Edward V’s brother-in-law Joseph Hopper Nicholson (1770–1817) owed Priestley $43.50 when he died in 1817. Edward V paid his debt (Lloyd Family Account Book, 1803–1820, private collection, Wye House, Talbot County, Maryland). A United States congressman from 1800 to 1806, Nicholson chaired the 1812 meetings of the Democratic citizens of Baltimore, in which they drafted letters to Congress in support of a war with England. Priestley shared the same opinions and expressed his heartfelt support for the French (Baltimore Whig, June 5, 1813). The author thanks Gregory R. Weidman for sharing her research on the Ridgley’s furniture and patronage.
27. Scharf, Chronicles of Baltimore, p. 431.
28. Ibid., pp. 209, 472. For more information on Oliver’s merchant business, see Bruchey, Robert Oliver, Merchant of Baltimore. Two of Oliver’s executors—his brother Thomas Oliver and merchant Robert M. Gibbes—were clients of Priestley. Baltimore County Inventories, 1835, pp. 425–45.
29. See Scharf, Chronicles of Baltimore, p. 468. Fancy furniture purchased by the Browns from John and Hugh Finlay remains in the collections of descendants. For more on furniture commissioned by the Brown family, see Gregory R. Weidman and Jennifer F. Goldsborough, eds., Classical Maryland, 1815–1845 (Baltimore: Maryland Historical Society, 1993), pp. 92–96.
30. Glenn’s house and furnishings were vandalized during the 1835 riots (precipitated by ideas espoused during the Democratic Convention) in Baltimore. He was reimbursed over $37,000 for the damage to his home and furnishings (Scharf, Chronicles of Baltimore, p. 476). Another debtor who sustained considerable damages during the riot was Priestley’s attorney Reverdy Johnson, whose mansion on Monument Square was one of the grandest in the city. Johnson escaped injury by fleeing to Fort McHenry. The city of Baltimore reimbursed him over $40,000 (ibid., pp. 489, 516).
31. Many other prominent attorneys, accountants, doctors, merchants, gentlemen, and ship captains were among Priestley’s debtors. Some of the amounts were quite large. Accountant John Barrington owed his estate $580 for a note due in 1834 and H. O. Diffenderfer owed $496, payable in iron bar. Smaller debtors included Dr. Ashton Alexander, Dr. Barr, bank cashier Jacob Bier, Captain John Chase, Miss Chew, Dr. D. H. Clendenin, merchant J. Cornthwaite, Samuel J. Donaldson, Charles W. Dorsey, Dr. Michael Diffenderfer, attorneys W. H. Gatchell and Upton Scott Heath, attorney Reverdy Johnson, printer Sheppard C. Leakin, Captains Joshua Mezick and James Philips, conveyancer Beale Spurrier, Henry Thomson, and insurer Joseph Townsend.
32. The author thanks Robert F. Trent for suggesting that “Duro” could be a corruption of du roi and for sharing his information on French chairs. See Pauline Agius, Ackermann’s Regency Furniture and Interiors (Wiltshire, Eng.: Crowood Press, 1984), p. 72. John Claudius Loundon, An Encyclopedia of Cottage, Farm, and Villa Architecture and Furniture (London: Longman, Orme Brown, Green, & Longmans, 1839), pl. 1913.
33. In March 1808, Priestley charged Dr. Thomas C. Walker forty dollars for a “small commode sideboard” (Craddock Papers, ms. 196, MHS)—a form he advertised five months later. The Whig, August 24, 1808. In 1817, Priestley sold Maryland planter Harry Dorsey Gough a mahogany cradle for the enormous sum of ten dollars (Harry Dorsey Gough Papers, MHS). Gough’s home, Perry Hall, was in Harford County, Maryland. Hill, “Baltimore Furniture Craftsmen,” p. 214. Katherine Conover Hunt, “The White House Furnishings of the Madison Administration, 1809–1817” (M.A. thesis, University of Delaware, 1971), pp. 46–49, 61. The author thanks Tara Gleason for this reference. Presidential commissions elevated the reputation of Priestley as well as those of contemporaries William Camp and John and Hugh Finlay. Other cabinetmakers who received similar commissions were William Palmer of New York and John Aiken of Philadelphia.
34. These merchants included Messrs. Moubos, Latil, Zacharie, Pascault, Dumeste, and Delaporte. Scharf, Chronicles of Baltimore, p. 209. Alevizatos, “The Furniture and Furnishings of the Edward Lloyd Family,” pp. 41, 162, 164. When the Marquis de Lafayette visited Baltimore in July 1824, his secretary, Monsieur Levasseur, recorded that the city’s residents possessed an air of “elegance and delicacy of manners” that typified “the amiable union of American frankness and French ease.” In his description of Baltimoreans’ patronage of the fine arts, Levasseur mentioned two French artisans, Monsieur Giles, the director of the Basilica Cathedral’s choir, and Maximilien Godefroy, architect of the Unitarian Church—“a masterpiece of elegance and simplicity” (Raphael Semmes, Baltimore As Seen by Visitors, 1783–1860 [Baltimore: Maryland Historical Society, 1953], pp. 63–65). These immigrant artisans undoubtedly had an influence on Baltimore tastes. Edward Lloyd V was Lafayette’s host in Maryland.
35. The Bosley’s Lannuier suite is in the Maryland Historical Society. See Peter M. Kenny, Frances F. Bretter and Ulrich Leben, Honoré Lannuier: Cabinetmaker from Paris (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1998), pp. 133–35. Finlay’s notice appeared in the Baltimore American, December 19, 1810, as quoted in Weidman, Furniture in Maryland, p. 77. Hugh Finlay visited Europe two years before Joseph Barry. Like the Madisons, Priestley was an ardent francophile. He served as a private in the War of 1812 and supported the French cause in newspaper editorials. In the June 2, 1813, issue of the Baltimore Whig, he described Captain John Roberts as a “viper” who “would rather see Baltimore burn by the British than saved by the French.” In the June 18, 1813, issue of the Federal Republican and Commercial Gazette (Georgetown, Maryland), Roberts subsequently accused Priestley of being a coward and calumniator because Priestley did not sign his name to his editorial in the Baltimore Whig. The author thanks Martin L. Russell of the American Antiquarian Society for helping locate this editorial. Weidman and Goldsborough, Classical Maryland, figs. 121–28.
36. Chevalier Marter’s name appears on Priestley’s list of debtors.
37. Wye House is currently the home of the twelfth consecutive generation of the Lloyd family, eight of whom have lived in the 1787 Wye House structure that survives today. Lloyd Family Account Book, 1803–1820. See Alevizatos, “The Furniture and Furnishings of the Edward Lloyd Family,” appendix c.
38. For complete construction and condition notes on all of the Lloyd furniture, see Alevizatos, “The Furniture and Furnishings of the Edward Lloyd Family,” appendix d. The pier glasses date ca. 1750 and were ordered for Edward Lloyd III’s house. Edward IV installed them in his newly built Wye House in 1788. Edward V ordered the girandoles through London merchant Thomas Eden in 1810. Because Eden sent six girandoles, rather than the three requested, the Lloyds sold three to Robert Oliver. See Alevizatos, “The Furniture and Furnishings of the Edward Lloyd Family,” pp. 34, 35, 177–79, and 311–14. For labeled or otherwise documented Baltimore tables with similarly reeded and truncated bases, see William Voss Elder III and Jayne Stokes, American Furniture, 1680–1880: From the Collection of the Baltimore Museum of Art (Baltimore: Baltimore Museum of Art, 1987), pp. 139–40, no. 105; Weidman and Goldsborough, Classical Maryland, p. 115, fig. 140.
39. The laminations of the D-ends and small braces of the frame are yellow poplar and the swing rails and large medial braces are oak. Each massive pillar is supported by four legs that are dovetailed and reinforced with an iron brace below. A sharply angled chamfer does not appear on work documented and attributed to other Baltimore cabinetmakers such as John Needles and Anthony Jenkins. See Elder and Stokes, American Furniture, pp. 139–40, no. 105, and Weidman and Goldsborough, Classical Maryland, p. 115, figs. 140–42.
40. The base of the Lloyd family card table is similar to those on several tables illustrated in Edgar G. Miller, Jr., American Antique Furniture: A Book for Amateurs, 2 vols. (Baltimore: Lord Baltimore Press, 1937), 2, nos. 1355, 1394, 1419, 1446, and 1450. Much of the furniture in Miller was from Baltimore-area collections and a high percentage of Maryland pieces are represented. Northern tables with cabriole legs typically have plinths (see New-York Society of Journeymen Cabinet Makers, The New-York Book of Prices for Cabinet & Chair Work [1802], pl. 5, no. 3). Like Edward Lloyd V’s card table, many examples from Boston, New York, and Philadelphia have radiating veneers and a “swelled” top. Baltimore cabinetmakers also made tables with “swelled” tops, thus this feature is not particularly useful in attributing furniture to Priestley’s shop. For more on card table shapes, see Benjamin Hewitt, Patricia E. Kane, and Gerald W. R. Ward, The Work of Many Hands: Federal Card Tables in America (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Art Gallery, 1981), pp. 68, 118. English card tables also influenced the design of Baltimore examples (Gregory R. Weidman, “Furnishing the Museum Rooms of the William Paca House,” Antiques 110, no. 1 [January 1977]: 165, fig. 1). O. A. Kirkland Auctioneers, Catalogue of the Celebrated Dr. William H. Crim Collection of Genuine Antiques, Baltimore, April 22–May 2, 1903, lot 774. Crim was a Baltimore physican and one of the earliest American collectors. Most of the urns on Baltimore tables are plain rather than reeded. A Baltimore breakfast table with a reeded urn is illustrated in Miller, American Antique Furniture, fig. 1419.
41. For the documented Camp examples, see Weidman, Furniture in Maryland, p. 164, no. 127.
42. Judging from surviving examples, early-nineteenth-century Maryland consumers preferred pedestal-end sideboards (Hill, “Baltimore Furniture Craftsmen,” pp. 208–29).
43. For other writing desks, see Decorative Arts Photographic Collection (hereafter cited as DAPC), accs. 72.335 and 87.235, Winterthur Museum. Weidman and Goldsborough, Classical Maryland, p. 137, no. 168; and Alevizatos, “The Furniture and Furnishings of the Edward Lloyd Family,” pp. 367–71, cat. 25.
44. Townsend came to Baltimore from Doylestown, Pennsylvania. In 1837, Richard Townsend wrote, “Edward Priestley, who from our earliest years, had carried on the Cabinet-making, between our house, and the bridge, died at his house . . . on the 12th.” Works Progress Administration of Maryland, trans., The Diary of Richard H. Townsend, vol. 1, (Baltimore: WPA, 1934), p. 198. Copies of the diary are at the Enoch Pratt Library and the Maryland Historical Society in Baltimore. The author thanks Mrs. Townsend Daniel Kent and Mrs. Billie Conkling for information on the Baltimore Equitable Society and for leading her to Richard Townsend’s diary.
45. Lloyd Papers, ms. 2001, reel 27, MHS. Although Priestley’s workmen cut the moldings on the handrail, he hired William Roney to turn the newels. On September 8, 1826, Roney billed Lloyd for turning five mahogany newels, three poplar newells, five mahogany drops, and three poplar drops. All of the documents pertaining to Priestley and Roney are transcribed in Alevizatos, “The Furniture and Furnishings of the Edward Lloyd Family,” appendix c. Nineteenth-century architectural treatises and builders’ guides document the complex and labor-intensive process of designing and manufacturing hand-railing. For more on this subject, see John Hall, A New and Concise Method of Hand-Railing (Baltimore: J. Murphy, 1840). In 1832, Priestley wrote Edward Lloyd VI, again seeking payment for the newels and handrail he made for Edward’s father six years earlier. The handrail was for Wye House rather than Edward VI’s residence at Wye Heights. The handrails for the latter are listed in a July 1827 bill from Jeremiah Boyd to Edward VI. Lloyd Papers, ms. 2001, reel 27, MHS.
46. Boyd’s bill lists fences, a roof, cornices, architraves, balusters, pilasters, and column capitals, pillars, and bases for the porches. His interior work included cornice moldings, drops, carpet sills, windowsills, jib doors, windows with “lights of gothic sashes,” walnut doors, mantels, mahogany paneling, spandrel paneling, risers, steps, bracket returns, and mahogany and walnut newels, handrails, and balusters. Lloyd Papers, ms. 2001, reel 27, MHS. Between June and November 1827, Edward Lloyd VI ordered a pair of gilded looking glasses, 2,992 pounds of green leather for upholstery, two dozen stair rods, and over 268 yards of carpeting and Venetian rugs from Baltimore merchants John Hastings and Joseph Blackwood. Lloyd Papers, ms. 2001, reel 28, MHS.
47. Lloyd Papers, ms. 2001, reel 27, MHS.
48. Ibid.
49. According to Vitruvius, male heads were termed “Persians” whereas female heads were called “caryatids” (Vitruvius, The Ten Books on Architecture, trans. by Morris Hicky Morgan, [1914; reprint ed., New York: Dover, 1960], pp. 7–8). Translations of his Ten Books on Architecture were widely available during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Thomas Hope and Thomas Sheraton did not use this terminology, nor did any American cabinetmaker known to the author. Hope referred to the male variety as “different heads of the Indian or bearded Bacchus” (p. 49). The term “mummy” heads is used here because that is the most common designation in American cabinetmakers’ price books. Vitruvius also used the term “therm” to designate the support below a head when the latter is used as a capital. Sheraton’s The Cabinet Dictionary (1803) refers to any tapered support as a “therm.” I have followed this usage because most American price books use the term “therm” in a manner similar to Sheraton. The author thanks Donald L. Fennimore for pointing out the original definitions of Persians and caryatids. The central doorway of the Mathias Hammond House (built ca. 1774) in Annapolis has a pulvinated frieze carved with oak leaves and bound with a crossed ribbon. Charles Percier and Pierre-Francois-Leonard Fontaine, Recueil des Decorations Interieures (1801), pls. 40, 51; Pierre de la Mésangère, Collection des Meubles et Objets de Goût (1802–1835), pls. 19, 22, 39, 50, 283; and George Smith’s Collection of Designs for Household Furniture and Interior Decoration (London, 1808), pls.91–95. The New-York Book of Prices (1817), p. 72. Priestley was a member of The United Society of Journey Cabinet & Chair Makers of the City of Baltimore. In January 1817, they agreed to produce furniture based on rates published in a book of prices. Regretably, no Baltimore price book has been discovered (Hill, “Baltimore Furniture Craftsmen,” p. 32).
50. Donald L. Fennimore, “Egyptian Influence in Early Nineteenth-Century American Furniture,” Antiques 137, no. 2 (May 1990): 1194. As the reeding on the Grecian sofa shown in figure 9 suggests, aspects of the Egyptian style are present in many pieces of late neoclassical Baltimore furniture.
51. Ibid. The Barry and Krickbaum sideboard is a promised gift to the Philadelphia Museum of Art. The author thanks Jack Lindsey for information on this piece. Joseph B. Barry produced furniture in the Egyptian taste similar to Priestley’s. The careers of both men spanned basically the same period, they catered to an elite clientele, and made similar forms—Grecian sofas, chests of drawers, pedestal sideboards, and mummy-headed decorations. The strong visual characteristics linking the pieces documented and attributed to Priestley’s shop differ from those associated with Barry. The Philadelphia cabinetmaker’s heads are much more rectilinear, possibly reflecting his reliance on designs illustrated in pls. 19 and 15 in Thomas Hope’s Household Furniture and Interior Decoration (1807) and in pls. 91–95 in Smith’s Collection of Designs for Household Furniture. Priestley’s more curvaceous and sculptural heads derive from Hope’s illustrations of Bacchus (pls. 37 and 57) as well as disparate architectural designs. Barry’s heads invariably surmount squared therms and are usually twinned; that is, the heads are paired and face in opposite directions as on the sideboard shown in pl. 95 in Smith’s Collection of Designs for Household Furniture. The design and orientation of Barry’s mummy heads reveal a stricter reliance on published sources and less creativity than those associated with Priestley’s shop. Both men were, however, familiar with the aforementioned design books as well as Percier and Fontaine’s Recueil des Decorations Interieures and la Mésangère’s Collection des Meubles et Objets de Goût. Although no direct link between Priestley and Barry is known, future research will probably reveal a connection. For more on furniture documented and attributed to Barry, see Fennimore and Trump, “Joseph B. Barry, Philadelphia Cabinetmaker”: 1213–25.
52. Several objects with carving related to Priestley’s survive (e.g., a sideboard at Colonial Williamsburg, a sideboard in the Physick House in Philadelphia, and a sideboard table at the Baltimore Museum of Art), but there is not sufficient evidence to attribute them to his shop. The carving on this group is less regimented than that documented and attributed to Priestley’s shop. A sideboard that descended in the Alexander Brown family and reputedly came from his house Mondawmin also has similar carving, but its location is unknown.
53. The reeding on the sideboard table is slightly deeper than that on the pier table. The mahogany gallery on the sideboard table is set into a rabbet in the top. Hirschl and Adler Galleries purchased the table at Briggs Auction House in Booths Corner, Pennsylvania, in January 1998 and subsequently added the historically accurate glass and silver knobs to the drawers.
54. See Weidman and Goldsborough, Classical Maryland, p. 133, fig. 63. The New-York Book of Prices refers to “tapered therms with mummy heads and feet.” Elder and Stokes, American Furniture, 1680–1880, pp. 154–55, no. 117.
55. See Weidman, Furniture in Maryland, pp. 140–41, no. 100. Although not documented as clients of Priestley, several social contemporaries of the Owings, such as their neighbors the Walkers, commissioned furniture from him. Another desk that appears to be from Priestley’s shop is in a private collection.
56. The author thanks William Voss Elder III for sharing his knowledge of Maryland furniture and genealogy and informing her of the sideboard at Andalusia. The black paint is over mahogany and may not be original. According to family tradition, Letitia Glenn owned the sideboard table prior to her marriage to Charles Biddle. A Baltimore Grecian sofa with the same history also survives at Andalusia. The design, construction, carved ornament, and history of the sideboard provide compelling evidence for attributing it to Priestley’s shop.
57. Sotheby’s, Americana and European and American Paintings, Drawings and Prints: The Andy Warhol Collection, vol. 5, April 29 and 30, 1989, lot 3172. For related case pieces, see Weidman, Furniture in Maryland, p. 124, no. 79; and Weidman and Goldsboro, Classical Maryland, p. 135, fig. 165.
58. The shaft of the sideboard table sold by Hirschl and Adler is 123/4 inches. X-radiography would reveal whether the legs had been shortened. The dimensions and construction of other components on the sideboards, sideboard tables, pier table, and desk are also similar. The feet, for example, are uniformly four inches high. Several structural features also link the sideboards, sideboard tables, pier table, and desk. Three of the pieces have layout designs inscribed on their secondary surfaces. The rear rails of the sideboard tables illustrated in figures 23 and 29 have an inscribed drawing of the panel of the center front drawer. All of the drawers examined by the author are constructed in the same manner. The dovetail joints are long and thin, and the drawer bottoms are chamfered at the front and sides, set into grooves, and nailed up into the drawer back. The bottoms are reinforced with thin poplar glue blocks attached end-to-end at each side, and the blocks are covered with a thin glue strip. Although this method of drawer construction has been associated with the shops of John Needles and William Camp, it also occurs on furniture from Philadelphia, New York, and Boston. In the absence of other supporting evidence, it is not a reliable means of attributing work to a specific maker. Needles worked with Priestley for six months before joining Camp’s shop. Although it is conceivable that Needles introduced Priestley’s structure to Camp’s shop, it is more likely that the aforementioned drawer construction was already well established in Baltimore’s cabinetmaking community. The mummy heads on a sideboard in the collection of the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation and a sideboard table in the Baltimore Museum of Art are closely related to those on the Lloyd pier table and can be categorized as a Priestley subgroup. Although these mummy heads are more freely and floridly carved, they are based on the same compilation of designs as the more severely carved mummy heads in the primary group of Priestley pieces. These two pieces lack only the benchmark of a documented Priestley piece. A sideboard known only in a photograph and a chest of drawers in a private collection have another variation of the mummy head. On the sideboard, the mummy is a bearded man whose head is draped in a sumptuous and fringed textile. On the chest of drawers, the colonette capitals are illusionary males with long, wavy mane-like hair and beards. For both of the above-mentioned subgroups, the compelling argument that they are products of Priestley’s shop centers on the case designs, which are similar to his. Each has mitered panels, cockbeaded drawers, gothic arch paneled doors, and inwardly steeped front rails. However, different cabinetmakers labeled case pieces that resemble each other stylistically. Ronald L. Hurst and Jonathan Prown, Southern Furniture 1680–1830: The Colonial Williamsburg Collection (Williamsburg: Harry N. Adams for the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation), pp. 525–29, no. 159; Elder and Stokes, American Furniture, 1680–1880, pp. 156–57, no. 118; DAPC acc. 74.6100; and private collection.
59. Baltimore American, March 14, 1837.
60. Philadelphia influences are evident in pre-Revolutionary Baltimore furniture, particularly in work documented and attributed to Gerrard Hopkins (fl. 1767–1800). He and one-time partner Robert Moore (fl. 1771–1787) were Philadelphia-trained cabinetmakers who moved to Baltimore in the 1760s. During the 1790s, Philadelphia influences were displaced by a variety of cabinetmaking traditions introduced by European immigrants. James Weston Livingood, The Philadelphia-Baltimore Trade Rivalry, 1780–1860 (Harrisburg, Pa.: Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, 1947), pp. 11–13. |