1. The Phillips Library (hereafter cited PL), Peabody Essex Museum (hereafter cited PEM), purchased the booklet from Cambridge, Massachusetts, bookseller Charles B. Wood III, who acquired it at auction (Swann Gallery, Printed and Manuscript Americana Featuring Western Americana, New York, December 2, 1999, lot 463). A bibliography of previous works is included in Margaret Burke Clunie, “Salem Federal Furniture” (master’s thesis, University of Delaware, 1976), pp. 304–10.
2. Charles Montgomery, American Furniture: The Federal Period (New York: Viking Press, 1966), pp. 19–26, 488–89; Martin Eli Weil, “A Cabinetmaker’s Price Book,” Winterthur Portfolio 13 (1979): 175–92; and Benjamin Hewitt, et al., The Work of Many Hands: Card Tables in America, 1790–1820 (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1982), pp. 46–47. Montgomery, American Furniture, p. 19.
3. Clunie, “Salem Federal Furniture,” p. 302. Although Edmund Johnson was primarily a cabinetmaker, he occasionally sold chairs. In the October 31, 1800, Salem Gazette, he advertised “mahogany furniture, and Windsor Chairs of all kinds at the lowest cash prices.” For more on Windsor chair makers in Salem, see Nancy Goyne Evans, American Windsor Chairs (New York: Hudson Hills Press, 1996), pp. 365–69. Mabel Munson Swan, Samuel McIntire and the Sandersons: Early Salem Cabinet Makers (Salem, Mass.: Essex Institute, 1934), p. 29. Some cabinetmakers, such as Daniel Clarke, advertised cabinetmaking, chair making, and carving.
4. Richard J. Morris, “Wealth Distribution in Salem, Massachusetts, 1759–1799, the Impact of the Revolution and Independence,” Essex Institute Historical Collections 114 (1978): 101; and James Duncan Phillips, Salem and the Indies: The Story of the Great Commerical Era of the City (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1947), pp. 224–30. Clunie, “Salem Federal Furniture,” p. 14.
5. Fiske Kimball, Samuel McIntire, Carver: The Architect of Salem (Salem, Mass.: Essex Institute, 1940), p. 71. The Diary of William Bentley, D.D., Pastor of the East Church, Salem, Massachusetts, 4 vols. (1905–1914; reprint, Gloucester, Mass.: Peter Smith, 1962), 4: 55. Clunie, “Salem Federal Furniture,” p. 300.
6. Swan, Samuel McIntire and the Sandersons, pp. 1–3. The Sandersons were originally from Watertown, and Austin was originally from Charlestown. Austin’s association with the Sandersons may explain his brother Richard’s membership in the Cabinet-Maker Society. Richard Austin was primarily a chair maker, and membership was generally limited to master cabinetmakers.
7. Clunie, “Salem Federal Furniture,” p. 23. See also Margaret B. Clunie, “Furniture Craftsmen of Salem, Massachusetts in the Federal Period,” Essex Institute Historical Collections 113 (1997): 191–203.
8. See the appendix for biographical information on the founding members. In the initial printing, the name of Edmund Johnson was left off the list, probably in error, so the printer pasted a new list in a slightly different order over the original listing. Daniel Clarke, who served as ?rst clerk of the Salem Cabinet-Maker Society, worked as a cabinetmaker and carver in Boston prior to 1794 and as a journeyman for the Sandersons in 1794. The Sandersons purchased ebony from William Appleton in 1799. Clunie, “Salem Federal Furniture,” pp. 29, 30, 48.
9. Two officers were elected at the December meeting, a moderator to run the meetings and a clerk to record all transactions.
10. Swan, Samuel McIntire and the Sandersons, pp. 13, 26.
11. Jenks advertised copies of the ?rst edition of Hepplewhite’s The Cabinet-Maker and Upholsterer’s Guide (1788) in 1791 and 1792. The copy he advertised in 1794 could be the ?rst or second (1789) edition. For more on these copies and the importation of design books into Salem, see Barbara Jobe, “Importation of Books into Salem, Massachusetts: 1783–1799,” unpublished research paper, 1972, p. 5, PL, PEM. Jacob Sanderson’s 1810 inventory lists three copies of Hepplewhite’s design book (Swan, Samuel McIntire and the Sandersons, p. 55).
12. Clunie, “Salem Federal Furniture,” p. 302. Clunie notes that the 109 surviving manifests are incomplete for the period mentioned, thus her analysis only points to the relative popularity of each form. Her list includes the following forms and number of references to each: basin stands (3), bureaus (23), cabinets (3), cabinet-bookcases (2), candlestands (2), card tables (39), clock cases (9), chairs (1,231), chests (6), desks (177), desk and bookcases (1), lady’s secretaries (6), light stands (4), lolling chairs (10), night tables (1), pembroke tables (7), secretaries (6), secretary-bookcases (19), sideboards (8), sofas (4), stands (25), and tables (80). Swan, Samuel McIntire and the Sandersons, p. 19. A work table made by Philadelphia cabinetmaker Robert McGuffin in 1808 is illustrated and discussed in David L. Barquist, American Tables and Looking Glasses in the Mabel Brady Garvan and Other Collections at Yale University (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1992), pp. 290–93. An invoice dated November 21, 1809, for furniture shipped by Elijah Sanderson on the schooner Neutrality includes three lady’s dressing boxes valued at six dollars each. Sanderson Papers, (hereafter cited SP), PL, PEM. Imported knife boxes, tea caddys, trays, and bottle boxes were readily available in Salem. American cabinetmakers usually found it more pro?table to sell British examples than to produce their own interpretations.
13. Montgomery, American Furniture, p. 23.
14. The two entries for a lady’s secretary, for example, are the only ones describing feet. One entry mentions “bracket feet” and the other “legs.” The entries for desks indicate a demand for older designs, but they do not specify options such as claw-and-ball feet and ogee bracket feet. Swan, Samuel McIntire and the Sandersons, pp. 9, 13–14, 31. Turned legs are not mentioned in invoices submitted by Samuel McIntire, Daniel Clarke, and Jonathan Gavet to the Sandersons between 1801 and 1803.
15. Checkered cock beading occurs on several elaborate case pieces made in Salem during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. See Jonathan Fairbanks and Elizabeth Bates, American Furniture, 1620 to the Present (New York: Richard Marek Publishers, 1981), p. 199, for a magni?cent chest-on-chest with checkered cock beading made for Elizabeth Derby West in 1796.
16. Richard H. Randall, Jr., American Furniture in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (Boston: By the museum, 1965), p. 96, ?g. 67.
17. Clunie, “Salem Federal Furniture,” p. 147. Invoice for Elijah Sanderson, August 4, 1804, SP, PL, PEM. Waite Family Papers, PL, PEM. Clement E. Conger and Alexandra W. Rollins, Treasures of State: Fine and Decorative Arts in the Diplomatic Reception Rooms of the U.S. Department of State (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1991), p. 79.
18. John Bivins, “The Convergence and Divergence of Three Stylistic Traditions in Charleston Neoclassical Case Furniture, 1785–1800,” in American Furniture, edited by Luke Beckerdite (Hanover, N. H.: University Press of New England for the Chipstone Foundation, 1997), pp. 47–105.
19. Margaret Burke Clunie, Anne Farnam, and Robert Trent, Furniture at the Essex Institute (Salem, Mass.: Essex Institute, 1980), p. 31.
20. Ropes Family Papers, PL, PEM.
21. Ibid. A sideboard (acc. 137,782) with a secretary drawer and string and husk inlay is in the collection of the Peabody Essex Museum. Dean Lahikainen, “The Gardner-Pingree House, Salem, Massachusetts,” Antiques 137, no. 3 (March 1990): 721, 724. Sideboards with reeded legs are not mentioned in cabinetmakers’ receipts until 1808 (Swan, Samuel McIntire and the Sandersons, p. 22).
22. James B. Bell and Cynthia Dunn Fleming, “Furniture from the Atkinson-Lancaster Collection at the New England Historic and Genealogical Society,” Antiques 113, no. 5 (May 1978): 1082. For other examples with “swell’d” façades, see Brock Jobe and Myrna Kaye, New England Furniture, The Colonial Era: Selections from the Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1984), pp. 230–38. Ropes Family Papers, PL, PEM.
23. Philip Zea, Robert Cheney, and Caroline F. Sloat, eds., Clock Making in New England, 1725–1825: An Interpretation of the Old Sturbridge Village Collection (Sturbridge, Mass.: Old Sturbridge Village, 1992), pp. 38–40.
24. Theodore R. Crom, “An American Beauty: The Samuel Mulliken II, Salem, Mass., Dwarf Clock,” National Association of Watch and Clock Collectors Bulletin 37, no. 299 (December 1995): 756–61. Other members of the Mulliken family had connections in Salem. Samuel’s brother Joseph worked as a watchmaker there in the early 1790s, and his brother, John, sent two clocks as venture cargo with the Sandersons in 1799 (Swan, Samuel McIntire and the Sandersons, pp. 2, 8, 14). Benjamin Balch, a member of the Newburyport clockmaking family, began working as a watchmaker in Salem in 1796. Edmund Currier is documented as a clockmaker in David R. Proper, “Edmund Currier Clockmaker,” Essex Institute Historical Collections 91, no. 4 (October 1965): 281–88. Henry Wyckoff Belknap, Artists and Craftsmen of Essex County, Massachusetts (Salem, Mass.: Essex Institute, 1927), pp. 84–108.
25. Swan, Samuel McIntire and the Sandersons, pp. 9, 14. Swan, Samuel McIntire and the Sandersons, p. 8. Belknap, Artists and Craftsmen of Essex County, pp. 84–108. Swan, Samuel McIntire and the Sandersons, p. 8. Simon Willard to Jacob Sanderson, November 21, 1804, SP, PL, PEM.
26. Swan, Samuel McIntire and the Sandersons, p. 37. Inventory of Elias Hasket Derby, October 7 , 1799, Derby Family Papers, PL, PEM.
27. Elijah Sanderson made a lady’s secretary similar to the one shown in ?g. 19 for his daughter Sally. A photograph of the piece is in the Sanderson Papers, PL, PEM. Montgomery, American Furniture, no. 190.
28. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Bulletin 81 ( 1983): 39. Swan, Samuel McIntire and the Sandersons, p. 12.
29. Conger and Rollins, Treasures of State, p. 179; and Brock Jobe, et al., Portsmouth Furniture: Masterworks from the New Hampshire Seacoast (Hanover, N.H.: University Press of New England for the Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities, 1993), p. 108. Christie’s, The Collection of Mr. and Mrs. James L. Britton, New York, January 16, 1999, lot 605. The chest with the modest cant is illustrated in Bivins, “The Convergence and Divergence of Three Stylistic Traditions,” p. 88, ?g. 34. Another example is published in Israel Sack, Inc., American Furniture from Israel Sack Collection 3 (January 1970): 580, no. 1353. Related examples from other centers in?uenced by Salem include a chest by Langley Boardman discussed in Jobe, Portsmouth Furniture, p. 106.The Needham chest appears in Dean A. Fales, Jr., Essex County Furniture: Documented Treasures from Local Collections, 1660–1860 (Salem, Mass.: Essex Institute, 1965), ?g. 28. The Waite receipt is cited in Swan, Samuel McIntire and the Sandersons, p. 36.
30. A set of three tables (ca. 1800), probably from the Portsmouth-Salem area, is in the Strawbery Banke collection. Each section has tapered legs with simple inlay. The dimensions are close to those given in the ?rst table entry in the price book. For an illustration of the set, see Northeast Auctions, New Hampshire Auction, Portsmouth, N. H., November 6–7, 1999, lot 857. Invoices dated January 18, 1802, and December 25, 1809, SP, PL, PEM.
31. Montgomery, American Furniture, no. 294. Hewitt, The Work of Many Hands , p. 133.
32. Hewitt, The Work of Many Hands, pp. 116, 131. Receipt dated July 7, 1796, SP, PL, PEM.
33. Swan, Samuel McIntire and the Sandersons, p. 22.
34. Ibid.
35. Montgomery, American Furniture, p. 347. Swan, Samuel McIntire and the Sandersons, p. 22. A receipt dated May 20, 1796, is in the Waite Family Papers, PL, PEM.
36. Montgomery, American Furniture, no. 355. Corner sideboards attributed to Salem are illustrated in Israel Sack, Inc., American Furniture from Israel Sack Collection 2 (April 1965): 767, no. 311 and 3 (September 1971): 773, no. 3322. The Peabody Essex Museum has a Salem corner washstand, acc. no. 102937.8.
37. Inventory of Elias Haskett Derby, October 7, 1799, Derby Family Papers. Receipt dated October 20, 1813, Waite Family Papers, PL, PEM.
38. Ledger of William Gray, 1750–1819, PL, PEM.
39. Examples appear in Skinner’s, American Furniture and Decorative Arts, Bolton, Massachusetts, August 12, 2000, lots 57, 64, 328.
40. Israel Sack, Inc., American Furniture from Israel Sack Collection 2 (April 1965): 305, no. 744. Randall, American Furniture in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, no. 108; Conger and Rollins, Treasures of State, p. 206; and Montgomery, American Furniture, p. 389. Swan, Samuel McIntire and the Sandersons, pp. 19, 31.
41. For related ?re screens, see Dean A. Fales, Jr., Furniture of Historic Deer?eld (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1976), p. 163; and Montgomery, American Furniture, no. 203. The Gavet stand is pictured in Randall, American Furniture in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, no. 106.
42. Swan, Samuel McIntire and the Sandersons, pp. 20–21.
43. Hepplewhite, Guide, p. 15. Randall, American Furniture in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, nos. 101, 137; and Clunie, “Salem Federal Furniture,” p. 237.
44. For earlier examples, see pl. 55 in the third edition of Thomas Chippendale, The Gentleman and Cabinet-Maker’s Director (1762). Peabody Essex Museum, acc. no. 132, 787.
45. Receipt, William Appleton to Lydia Waite, March 1796, Waite Family Papers, PL, PEM. Invoice for the schooner Sally, March 30, 1802, SP, PL, PEM. Swan, Samuel McIntire and the Sandersons, p. 31.
46. Clunie, “Furniture Craftsmen of Salem,” p. 199. The West sofa is illustrated in Fairbanks and Bates, American Furniture, 1620 to the Present, p. 217. The McIntire receipt is cited in Swan, Samuel McIntire and the Sandersons, p. 18.
47. Although square-back sofas with turned legs are illustrated in Thomas Sheraton’s Cabinet-Maker and Upholsterer’s Drawing Book (1793), the form did not become popular in Salem until around 1810. In that year, Lucy Hill purchased a fully carved version from Nehemiah Adams for sixty-seven dollars. Upholsterer Jonathan Bright charged her nineteen dollars for “Stu?ng” it and an additional twelve dollars for making a cushion (Nancy Cooper, “Samuel McIntire, Carver; Nehemiah Adams, Maker,” House Beautiful 69 [1931]: 394–95). Shipping manifest, April 25, 1805, SP, PL, PEM.
48. Swan, Samuel McIntire and the Sandersons, pp. 33, 36.
49. Montgomery, American Furniture, p. 165.
50. Clunie, “Salem Federal Furniture,” p. 199. Lahikainen, “The Gardner-Pingree House, Salem, Massachusetts,” p. 721.
51. Montgomery, American Furniture, p. 263. Elegant Embellishments: Furnishings from New England Homes, 1660–1860 , edited by Penny J. Sander (Boston: Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities, 1982), p. 53. Hepplewhite, Guide, p. 4.
52. Swan, Samuel McIntire and the Sandersons, pp. 31, 37. Two other documented Salem bedsteads are at the Peabody Essex Museum. One was made by Jacob Sanderson for Aaron Waite in 1807 (Clunie, Farnam, and Trent, Furniture at the Essex Institute, p. 38). The other, which bears the label of Thomas Needham, is illustrated in Fales, Essex County Furniture, no. 27. A Salem ?eld bed, 1801–1810, is pictured in Sotheby’s, Important Americana, Furniture, Folk Art and Decorations, New York, October 15, 1999, lot 83; and Northeast Auctions, New Hampshire Weekend Americana Auction, Portsmouth, N. H., March 3–4, 2001, lot 949. Swan, Samuel McIntire and the Sandersons, p. 28.
53. Gideon Tucker Family Papers, vol. 2, p. 96, PL, PEM. Sanderson Papers, PL, PEM.
54. Swan, Samuel McIntire and the Sandersons, pp. 6, 22–23. Mark Pitman charged twenty dollars for a mahogany coffin and ?ve dollars for a silver plate for “Miss Abigail Ropes” in 1839 (Nathaniel Ropes Papers, PL, PEM). Salem cabinetmakers do not appear to have exported coffins.
55. Swan, Samuel McIntire and the Sandersons, p. 9.
56. Clunie, “Salem Federal Furniture,” p. 300. Diary of William Bentley, 3: 51–52. The sects included Baptists, Methodists, Free-Will Baptists, and Adventists. See Phillips, Salem and the Indies, p. 202.
57. Gary Kornblith, “From Artisans to Businessmen: Master Mechanics in New England, 1789–1850” (Ph.D. diss., Princeton University, 1983), p. 177. |