1. As quoted on <www.newguineaart.com>.
2. Much of the research contained in this article came from Alexandra A. Alevizatos, “‘Procured of the best and most Fashionable Materials’: The Furniture and Furnishings of the Lloyd Family, 1750–1850” (master’s thesis, University of Delaware, 1999). Detailed construction and condition notes for most of the furniture illustrated in this article is in appendix d. Edward Lloyd I was born around 1610, perhaps in Wales or Elizabeth City. He matriculated at Magdalen College, Oxford University on March 16, 1626. His father was also a graduate of Magdalen. Edward I was in Virginia by 1637 and was elected a burgess for Lower Norfolk in 1644. He worked with his brother Cornelius (d. 1654) to establish viable trade routes to serve London merchants and also sought religious freedom as a Quaker. Edward I was excommunicated from the Colony of Virginia for refusing to recite the Apostles’ Creed and the Nicene Creed and moved to Maryland in 1648. He founded Provincetown, south of Annapolis, on the Severn River, which he named after the Severn River in Wales. Edward I rose to immediate political, economic, and social prominence, thus initiating what would become a patrimony of Lloyd-dominated politics, economics, and society. The Lloyds quickly abandoned Edward I’s Quaker beliefs in favor of the Anglican faith. For more information on Edward I, see <www.ancestry.com>; J. Henry Lea and J. R. Hutchinson, English Origins of American Colonists (New York: New York Genealogical and Biographical Record, 1903–1916), p. 10; and George Henry MacKenzie, Colonial Families of the United States of America, 7 vols. (Bowie, Md.: Heritage Books, 1912), 2: 454.
3. For more on Edward IV, see <www.ancestry.com>. Edward Lloyd VII to Charles and Mary Lloyd, April 23, 1906, Talbot County, Maryland, Deed of Property Transfer, Land Records, Liber TGW, no. 147, fl. 78. Plumbing was added inside the house in 1917. Confronted with a daunting preservation effort, Elizabeth and Joanna Lloyd toyed with the idea of donating Wye House to the National Trust for Historic Preservation. Instead, Elizabeth and her husband Morgan B. Schiller decided to use the money required to endow Wye House as a National Trust property to make it their permanent home. They added electricity and heat to Wye House in 1949.
4. The author thanks Mary Donnell Tilghman for recounting the oral tradition concerning Charles, Mary, and Elizabeth giving away objects and having reproductions made.
5. For more on Cadwalader, see Nicholas B. Wainwright, Colonial Grandeur in Philadelphia: The House and Furniture of General John Cadwalader (Philadelphia: Historical Society of Pennsylvania, 1964).
6. For unexplained reasons but likely as a result of the argument over his estate, the ledgers, purchase orders, and accounts books that would have provided the details about Edward III’s business transactions and purchases of furnishings do not survive. The missing ledger of Edward III is referenced in the Lloyd Papers (Maryland Historical Society, hereafter cited MHS) and the Cadwalader Papers (Historical Society of Pennsylvania, hereafter cited HSP) as “Ledger A.” For biographical information on Edward III, see Edward C. Papenfuse, Alan F. Day, David W. Jordan, and Gregory A. Stiverson, Biographical Dictionary of the Maryland Legislature, 1635–1789 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1985), p. 535. Will of Edward Lloyd III, signed March 6, 1750 and probated March 26, 1770, ms. 2001, box 14, vol. 5 or reel 25, MHS. The inventories for Edward III, 1770; IV, July 21, 1796; V, after June 1834 (this will be referred to as Edward V’s inventory, but it is actually “A List of Articles Left in Wye House Novr 1834”); VI, April 16, 1862; and Elizabeth Tayloe Lloyd, March 29, 1825 (this is actually “A List of Articles belonging to Edward Lloyd [V] Esquire in his House in Annapolis”), ms 2001, reel 40, MHS. Edward III’s estate consisted of 43,000 contiguous acres of land in five Maryland counties, 174 slaves, 5 schooners, £10,961.3.7 in household furnishings, £11,462 in bills owed to the estate, and £8,200 in cash (Inventory of the estate of Edward Lloyd III). An entry in the estate ledger notes “By 1 large Blank Book purchased of Mr. Wallace & Co. for his own but afterwards made use of containing Receipts to prevent future claims from Mr. Cadwallader & Capt Lloyd on the Administrator” [Edward Lloyd IV] (Cash Book for the Estate of Edward Lloyd III, August 1776, ms. 2001, box 15, vol. 9, MHS). Despite always suspecting that Edward IV was taking more money from the estate than John Cadwalader felt he was due, the latter enjoyed a close and brotherly relationship with Edward IV, visited him often in Annapolis, and entertained Edward IV and his wife Elizabeth (Tayloe) in Philadelphia. The problems in the division of Edward III’s estate persisted beyond the death of John Cadwalader, whose sons by his second marriage continued to claim rights to the Lloyd money (Receipt of Money Paid to Thos. Cadwalader [$137], 1815, ms. 2001, box 57, MHS). Inventory of the Estate of Edward Lloyd III.
7. Inventory of the Estate of Edward Lloyd III.
8. Ibid.
9. Ibid.
10. Ibid. Inventory of the Estate of Edward Lloyd IV. For more on upholstered armchairs, see John T. Kirk, American Furniture and the British Tradition to 1830 (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1982), figs. 1142–46; and Robert F. Trent’s entry for catalogue no. 91 in Portsmouth Furniture: Masterworks from the New Hampshire Seacoast, edited by Brock Jobe (Hanover, N. H.: University Press of New England for the Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities, 1993), pp. 335–37.
11. Inventory of the Estate of Edward Lloyd III.
12. Ibid.
13. N. Hudson Moore, The Old Clock Book (New York: Frederick A. Stokes, Co., 1911), pp. 227, 259. Inventory of the Estate of Edward Lloyd IV. Photographs at Wye House.
14. Several objects listed in the probate inventory are not in the private inventory; for example, a nine-drawer chest. For the Philadelphia sale, see Edward Lloyd III Estate Ledger, ms. 2001, box 14, vol. 5, MHS. For the Annapolis sale, see Edward Lloyd III Estate Daybook, 1770–1774, box 15, vol. 6, MHS.
15. Inventory of the Estate of Edward Lloyd III. Affleck’s bill is reproduced in Wainwright, Colonial Grandeur, p. 44. The bill totaled £119.8. The carvers’ bills were tallied in a separate column and do not appear to have been included in Affleck’s total. John J. McCusker, How Much Is That in Real Money (Worcester, Mass.: American Antiquarian Society, 2001), p. 70, table b1.
16. Inventory of the Estate of Edward Lloyd III. The inventories list nearly every silver form imaginable—castors, salts and shovels, wine funnels, dish crosses, teapots, coffeepots, chocolate pots, cups, candlesticks, salvers, tankards, canns, goblets, plates, knives, forks, spoons, and toothpicks. Silver tankards, candlesticks, taper sticks, and candle arms also survive from Edward Lloyd III’s proprietorship. When Elizabeth Lloyd married John Cadwalader in 1768, Edward and Anne gave them a five-piece tea set made in London in 1763 (Philadelphia Museum of Art). “Savalls” are pans on candlesticks to save the candle ends. The branch candlesticks probably had the Lloyd coat of arms engraved on them as well. The candle arms do not appear in any inventory of the Cadwalader’s townhouse (Wainwright, Colonial Grandeur, pp. 52–57, 72–73).
17. Wye Plantation Inventory, 1770, ms. 2001, reel 40, MHS. The tobacco leaf service does not appear on Edward III’s private inventory. The term “tobacco leaf” was used in the eighteenth century to refer to this pattern, but it was not used in inventories of the Lloyds until the twentieth century. Charles Howard Lloyd kept two hundred pieces of the tobacco leaf service for himself and dispersed the remainder among his seven siblings in 1907.
18. Edward Lloyd V had a sixty-ton boat with cannons that made a “thunderous report” (Richard Parkinson, A Tour in America in 1789, 1799, and 1800, 2 vols. [London, 1805], 1: 230). Admiral Buchanan was the first superintendent of the United States Naval Academy. The Lloyd family donated the land for the Academy to the United States Government in the 1840s. During the Civil War, Admiral Buchanan sided with the Confederacy and captained the USS Merrimack in 1861 (Elihu S. Riley, “The Ancient City”: A History of Annapolis in Maryland, 1649–1887 [Annapolis, 1887], pp. 266–67).
19. Richard Bennett Lloyd moved to England in 1773 to purchase a commission in the Cold Stream Guards. In the enlistment book, he was identified as “Gent.” He entered as an ensign in 1774 and was painted as the Officer of the Day in the antiquated uniform of 1773 by Benjamin West (fig. 4). As war with America loomed, he resigned his commission in February 1776, having achieved the rank of captain. Richard then began a family with his new wife Joanna Leigh Lloyd, a woman of noted beauty from the Isle of Wight. In fulfillment of his marriage contract, Richard and Joanna moved to France (from 1777 to 1780), where Richard acted as Edward IV’s agent and sent them the latest French goods. He and Joanna set up home in Maryland by 1782, but by the time he died in 1787, his estranged wife had returned to England with their four children (Dennis A. Carr, “Carving out a Colonial Identity: The Revolutionary Era Portrait Commissions of Richard Bennett Lloyd,” unpublished manuscript submitted for the Yale University History of Art Ph.D. program, spring 2002.). Because of Richard Lloyd’s youth and peripatetic nature, most of the silver he inherited was described in Edward III’s inventory as “on loan” to Elizabeth and John Cadwalader (Inventory of the Estate of Edward Lloyd III). The furnishings listed in Richard Bennett Lloyd’s estate inventory appear to be those he inherited from his father, suggesting that his household goods were stored until he returned to claim them. (Inventory of the Estate of Richard Bennett Lloyd, January 12, 1788, ms. 2001, reel 16 and ms. 721, MHS.) For more on Shrewsbury Farm, see Wainwright, Colonial Grandeur, pp. 61, 62, 66–68, 71, 76, 126, 155. Shrewsbury Farm burned in 1812. After Elizabeth died in 1776, John Cadwalader, his second wife, and then a cousin raised Elizabeth’s three daughters. Although the daughters’ birth right to the furnishings inherited and purchased by John and Elizabeth is noted in the Cadwalader and Lloyd papers, no manuscripts documenting the sisters’ receipt of furnishings is known. For more on the wall colors, upholstery and curtain fabrics, and carpets in the Cadwaladers’ townhouse, see Wainwright, Colonial Grandeur, pp. 30, 31, 40–43, 50–52, 69; and Luke Beckerdite and Leroy Graves, “New Insights on John Cadwalader’s Commode-Seat Side Chairs,” in American Furniture, edited by Luke Beckerdite (Hanover, N. H.: University Press of New England for the Chipstone Foundation, 2000), pp. 160–68, nt 10. For the latest research on the chair illustrated in fig. 15, see Beckerdite and Graves, “New Insights,” pp. 152–68.
20. Edward IV’s library contained the following architectural design books: Abraham Swan’s A Collection of Designs in Architecture (1757), Isaac Ware’s translation of Andrea Palladio’s The Four Books of Architecture (1738), a collection of Palladio’s designs titled Architecture, Revised, Designed, and Published by Giacomo Leoni (1742), and James Gibbs’ Rules for Drawing the Several Parts of Architecture (1738) (Edwin Wolf II, “The Library of Edward Lloyd IV of Wye House,” Winterthur Portfolio 5, [1969]: 87–122). All of these books are in the library at Wye along with Edward IV’s sterling silver surveying instruments made by E. Nairne of London. The instruments are in their original shagreen case lined with embossed paper and velvet. Ledger of Edward Lloyd IV, 1770-1791, ms. 2001, box 15, vol. 7, MHS.
21. Memoranda Book of Edward Lloyd IV, ms. 2001, box 15, vol. 10, MHS. Inventory of the Estate of Edward Lloyd IV. The information on Gardiner and Eaton is from Ledger of Edward Lloyd IV.
22. List of Goods Sent from Arthur Bryan to Edward Lloyd IV, March 1788, ms. 2001, reel 21, MHS. The pier glasses were valued at £30. Only the mahogany bed, silk bed curtains, window curtains, and six chairs with silk bottoms together added up to more than the pier glasses (Inventory of the Estate of Edward Lloyd III).
23. Microscopy performed by conservator Richard Wolbers in March 1999 revealed that the pier glasses were gilded twice. The earliest strata—gesso followed by bole and gold leaf—are consistent with the water gilding processes commonly used during the eighteenth century. The leaf and areas of the gesso were worn and soiled, obviously from exposure. The later strata—oil, litharge followed by gesso, a yellow, oil-bound layer, gold leaf, and a thin film of oil—are
consistent with oil gilding. The author thanks Richard Wolbers for his continual assistance in analyzing materials from Wye House. For comparable designs, see Batty and Thomas Langley, The Builder’s Jewell, or Youth’s Instructor (1741), pl. 78; and William Jones, The Gentleman or Builder’s Companion (1739), pls. 43, 45, 47. John Fleming and Hugh Honour, The Penguin Dictionary of Decorative Arts (New York: Viking, 1989), p. 375.
24. The author thanks Mary Donnell Tilghman for information on room designations. Receipt from George Dudley documenting major repairs in Wye House and re-hanging the pier glasses, December 6, 1823, ms. 2001, reel 26, MHS.
25. Inventory of the Estate of Edward Lloyd V. Edward V ordered three “pairs” of girandoles from London merchants Thomas Eden, Christopher Court & Co. in 1810, but the firm sent six. Edward V clearly intended for each of his girandoles to have two branches, but the agent understood “pair” to mean two individual girandoles. A nine-year battle ensued during which Edward refused to pay the merchants £800 for the unwanted girandoles. In 1818, Edward V sold three of the six girandoles to Robert Oliver, a prominent merchant of Baltimore, for the dollar equivalent of £1053 (£800 plus £253 in interest) (Debit entry dated September 15, 1818, Account Book of Edward Lloyd V, 1803–1820, facsimile at Wye House). The third girandole survives and matches the two in front of the pier glasses. A note in a box of girandole prisms recently retrieved from the basement stated that the third girandole stood in front of the third pier glass in the large dining room. (The names of the rooms at Wye House varied during diVerent periods of proprietorship and cultural fashion. The large north parlor was occasionally referred to as the “dining room.”) In one of the four partial inventories taken after Edward V’s death in 1834, “Three large looking Glasses, Gilt Frames” are listed in the large north parlor. The third looking glass does not appear in Edward VI’s inventory.
26. Inventory of the Estate of Edward Lloyd III. Ledger of Edward Lloyd IV. The author thanks Mary Donnell Tilghman for the information on Charles and Mary Lloyd selling beds and Elizabeth Schiller rescuing beds.
27. Inventory of the Estate of Edward Lloyd IV.
28. Elizabeth met Edward IV through her father John Tayloe. Both men imported racehorses from the same broker in London (Papenfuse et al., Biographical Dictionary of the Maryland Legislature, p. 536). The quote is from a letter written by William Eddis on August 9, 1771 (William Eddis, Letters from America, edited by Aubrey C. Land [Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press, 1969], p. 57). Edward IV owned a copy of Eddis’ Letters (Inventory of the Estate of Edward Lloyd IV). Marcia M. Miller, “The Chase-Lloyd House” (master’s thesis, George Washington University, 1993). Buckland trained in London and came to Virginia in 1755. He designed Gunston Hall for George Mason and interior woodwork for Mount Airy, the house of John (1721–1779) and Rebecca (1731–1787) Tayloe in Richmond County, Virginia. Edward IV and Elizabeth convinced Buckland to come Annapolis in 1771. For more on Buckland and his Virginia commissions, see Luke Beckerdite, “William Buckland and William Bernard Sears: The Designer and the Carver,” Journal of Early Southern Decorative Arts 8, no. 2 (November 1982): 6–41. Between the winter of 1771 and his death in 1774, Buckland designed the Lloyd House and the Mathias Hammond House. Buckland’s principal carver in Annapolis was Thomas Hall. On December 16, 1773, the Maryland Gazette reported: “RAN away from [William Buckland]...a servant man named Thomas Hall, a carver by trade....The indenture he signed in London was given up to him and a discharge, after which he executed another indenture by which he was to be allowed in consideration of his former service, wages after the rate of ten shillings per week till the time of his expiration, which would have been in September next.” This suggests that Hall signed an indenture with Edward IV to pay for his passage. For more on Buckland and his Maryland workforce, see Luke Beckerdite, “William Buckland Reconsidered: Architectural Carving in Chesapeake, Maryland, 1771–1774,” Journal of Early Southern Decorative Arts 8, no. 2 (November 1982): 45. Letter to Charles Carroll, Barrister, as transcribed in “A Lost Copy-Book of Charles Carroll of Carrollton,” Maryland Historical Magazine 32, no. 3 (September 1937): 200.
29. Although Buckland designed furniture sympathetic with the woodwork in Gunston Hall and Mount Airy, there is no evidence that he provided furnishings for the Lloyds. For more on the work of Buckland and carver William Bernard Sears, see Luke Beckerdite, “Architect-Designed Furniture in Eighteenth-Century Virginia: The Work of William Buckland and William Bernard Sears,” in American Furniture, edited by Luke Beckerdite (Hanover, N. H.: University Press of New England for the Chipstone Foundation, 1994), pp. 28–48. See Inventory of Elizabeth Tayloe Lloyd.
30. French chairs are illustrated in several British design books including Thomas Chippendale’s The Gentleman and Cabinet-Maker’s Director (1754, 1755, 1762), William Ince and John Mayhew’s The Universal System of Houshold Furniture (1762), Robert Manwaring’s The Cabinet and Chair Maker’s Real Friend and Companion (1762), The Society of Upholsterers’ Genteel Houshold Furniture in the Present Taste (ca. 1765), and Robert Manwaring’s The Chair Maker’s Guide (1766). The Lloyd chairs (fig. 23) are listed in the inventories of Edward IV, Elizabeth Tayloe Lloyd, and Edward VI. They retain evidence of painted and gilded decoration underneath the upholstery. As with all of the furniture for the Annapolis townhouse, the order for the chairs and settee does not exist. The armchairs were definitely not part of the furnishings of Edward III’s Wye House. Receipt for settee from J. and J. Williams, 1844, ms. 2001, box 14, vol. 7, MHS.
31. The bureau bookcase has details similar to those on several plates in Chippendale’s Director. There is no evidence that the bookcase had an integral central ornament or bust. For more on the carving in the Lloyd’s townhouse, see Beckerdite, “William Buckland Reconsidered,” pp. 43–51.
32. Ledger entries, letters, notes, receipts for hauling, and miscellaneous documents in the Lloyd papers indicate that furniture moved back and forth from Annapolis to Wye. The desk-and-bookcase had a prospect drawer with a label by John Shaw dated 1797 when it was sent out for conservation in the 1970s. The piece returned without the label.
33. For more on John Shaw, see William Voss Elder III and Lou Bartlett, John Shaw: Cabinetmaker of Annapolis (Baltimore: Baltimore Museum of Art, 1983). Possibly owing to his frequent use of labels, Shaw became an icon of Maryland cabinetmaking at an early date. The desk-and-bookcase is consistently referred to as “The Shaw desk-and-bookcase” in twentieth-century inventories of Wye House.
34. Beckerdite, “William Buckland Reconsidered,” p. 52.
35. Inventory of the Estate of Edward Lloyd IV. Inventory of the Estate of Elizabeth Tayloe Lloyd.
36. Related desks with blocked interiors appear to have been made in the southern area of eastern Maryland and on the Eastern Shore. A desk very similar to the Lloyd example is in a private collection in New York (the author thanks Sumpter Priddy III for this information). For related work from Virginia’s Eastern Shore, see Ronald L. Hurst and Jonathan Prown, Southern Furniture, 1680–1830, The Colonial Williamsburg Collection (Williamsburg: Harry N. Abrams, Inc. for the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, 1997), pp. 429–32.
37. For the orders, see ms. 2001, reel 21, MHS.
38. Several Baltimore chairs have splats similar to those of the English chairs furnished by Thomas Eden (fig. 34), but the American examples do not have overlapping leaves on the stiles. For similar designs, see Thomas Sheraton’s The Cabinetmaker and Upholsterer’s Drawing Book (1793), pl. 36; and George Hepplewhite’s The Cabinet-Maker and Upholsterer’s Guide (1794), pl. 1. The author thanks Mary Donnell Tilghman for the information on Charles Lloyd purchasing the Potthast chairs. For a comprehensive study of the Potthasts, see Catherine Rogers Arthur, “‘The True Antiques of Tomorrow:’ Furniture by the Potthast Bros. of Baltimore, 1892–1975,” in American Furniture, edited by Luke Beckerdite (Hanover, N.H.: University Press of New England for the Chipstone Foundation, 2000), pp. 31–58.
39. Photographic inventory dated 1948, Wye House.
40. “Inventory for Goods to be Shipped by Messrs. Oxley, Hancock & Co Merchants London for the use of Edward Lloyd, Wye in Maryland,” January 17, 1792, ms. 2001, reel 21, MHS. For unknown reasons, Edward IV sent a duplicate order to Thomas Eden & Co. on the same day. In a letter accompanying the order to Oxley Hancock & Co., Edward IV requested that the proprietors:
|
Call [their]...attention to the ornaments for a Chimney Piece and particularly to the Ornamental decorations for a dining Table by which is Meant a Glass Mirror with Images... which I beg may be exceedingly elegant and by no means Paultry ~ The Price stated in the Invoice is Presumed to be equal to the Order but should it require a farther advance of a few Guineas you are at Liberty to do it - The setting of the Picture answers fully our expectations and it is thought by all that have Seen it very elegant and approve your Caution as to the Price which is equal to what was intended by my Letter- Your taste in this instance has Pleased us so much as to induce an allocation in an order. |
Inventory of the Estate of Edward Lloyd IV.
41. Inventory for Goods to be Shipped by Messrs. Oxley, Hancock & Co. Pictorial History of English Furniture Designs, compiled by Elizabeth White (SuVolk, Eng.: Antique Collector’s Club, 1990), pp. 249–58. Dressing tables illustrated by Sheraton and Hepplewhite typically have fitted top compartments above a case of drawers on tapered legs. One design for a dressing table shown on plate 53 in Sheraton’s Drawing Book has a case of drawers above a low skirt on splayed feet like the Lloyd example. Inventory of the Estate of Edward Lloyd IV. “Inventory for Goods to be Shipped by Messrs. Oxley, Hancock & Co.”
42. The order for the pianoforte is documented in a letter from Edward Lloyd IV to Messrs. Thomas Eden & Co., April 11, 1792, ms. 2001, reel. 21, MHS. Inventory of Edward Lloyd IV. Receipt from J. & J. Boydell, May 7, 1802, ms. 2001, reel 21, MHS. Edward V apparently ordered more prints than the documents show. In 1804, the Boydells gave him a silver medal for his patronage. The photographs are in the collection at Wye House.
43. Inventory of the Estate of Edward Lloyd IV. Letter from Edward Lloyd IV to Thomas Eden & Co., June 7, 1792, ms. 2001, reel 21, MHS.
44. Henrietta Maria Neale Bennett Lloyd (d. 1697), the wife of the second proprietor Philemon Lloyd (1646–1685), is credited with introducing greenhouses to Wye and to the colonies in general. The central block of the present greenhouse dates from the 1740s, but that structure was not the first greenhouse at Wye. Ledger of Edward Lloyd IV, July 4, 1786, MHS.
45. Account Book of Edward Lloyd V, 1799–1803, facsimile copy at Wye House. The room where the billiard table stood has a considerable amount of base molding, a chair rail, and a chimney surround with carved egg-and-tongue molding. The author thanks Mary McGinn, Thomas Heller, Joseph Kindig, III, and Jenifer Kindig for their thoughts on the woodwork in this room. Account Book of Edward Lloyd V.
46. As quoted in Dickson J. Preston, Talbot County: A History (Centerville, Md.: Tidewater Publishers, 1983), p. 86. Ledger of Edward Lloyd V.
47. Inventory of the Estate of Edward Lloyd IV. The construction of the billiard table’s playing surface has been characterized as unique among surviving examples, but John Shaw clearly based his design on the “universal table” illustrated on pl. 25 in Sheraton’s Drawing Book. Winterthur Museum accession file 1958.58. Contrary to recent publications, Charles Willson Peale was a Maryland painter. He did not travel from Philadelphia to Maryland to paint Edward IV’s family; rather, he was in Maryland and living at Wye when he executed the work shown in figure 3. He traveled from Maryland to Philadelphia to paint the Cadwaladers (see fig. 5) in 1776. Peale set up a painting room in Philadelphia in 1775 and moved there permanently in 1789. See Edgar B. Richardson, Brooke Hindle, and Lillian B. Miller, Charles Willson Peale and His World (New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1983), p. 50.
48. Alevizatos, “Procured of the best and most Fashionable Materials,” pp. 17–21. For information on the objects Edward VI continued to use, see lists at Wye House and lists in ms. 2001, reel 40, MHS.
49. Inventory of the Estate of Edward Lloyd V.
50. Oswald Tilghman, A History of Talbot County, Maryland, 1661–1861, 2 vols. (Baltimore: Williams and Wilkins Co., 1925), 2:184–228.
51. See Kirk, American Furniture and the British Tradition, p. 181, fig. 496 for a British secretary similar to the Lloyd example.
52. Estate Account with Arthur Bryan, Edward Lloyd IV Estate Accounts, 1797, ms. 2001, reel 21, MHS. Estate Account with James Martin, Edward Lloyd Estate Accounts, ms. 2001, reel 26, MHS. All of the presses and wardrobes listed on Edward IV’s inventory are pine or painted. The mahogany press draws primarily on designs for “wardrobes” illustrated on plate 87 in Hepplewhite’s Guide.
53. Inventory of the Estate of Edward Lloyd IV. The shape of the square table with elliptical front is not commonly associated with Baltimore, but the table has several construction features associated with work from that city: laminated curved front rails, oak rear rails, flush rear leg construction, and a medial brace. An earlier table with an elliptical front is illustrated and discussed in Sumpter Priddy III, J. Michael Flanigan, and Gregory R. Weidman, “The Genesis of Neoclassical Style in Baltimore Furniture” in American Furniture, edited by Luke Beckerdite (Hanover, N. H.: University Press of New England for the Chipstone Foundation, 2000), p. 91, fig. 52. For more on American card tables, see Benjamin Hewitt, Patricia E. Kane, and Gerald W. R. Ward, The Work of Many Hands: Card Tables in Federal America (New Haven: Yale University Art Gallery, 1982).
54. Hurst and Prown, Southern Furniture, pp.121–23. On May 18, 1790, the Maryland Gazette reported that Singleton and his partner William McFaddon had just arrived in Baltimore: “from the experience [Singleton]...has had in Europe, and diVerent parts of this Continent” they would be pleased to complete work at their new business on Gay Street.” The partnership dissolved in 1795, but Singleton’s business thrived. The paterae with green copper-dyed accents may be the type Singleton purchased from Baltimore inlay maker Thomas Barrett, whom Singleton owed money for inlay work when Barrett died in 1800. In his advertisements, Singleton claimed he satisfied orders for making chairs, card tables, fire screens, and chests of drawers, and especially noted his desire to fill orders for those gentry who lived outside of Baltimore. When he died in 1803, Singleton owned a cabinetmaker’s book of furniture designs and a subscription to the Baltimore Circulating Library (Inventory of William Singleton, September 28, 1803, pp. 54–57, copy m-1I, Joseph Downs Library, Winterthur Museum, original in Maryland State Archives, Annapolis.) A pair of chairs attributed to Singleton are illustrated and discussed in Treasures of State: Fine and Decorative Arts in the Diplomatic Reception Rooms of the U.S. Department of State, edited by Clement C. Conger and Alexandra Rollins (New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1991), pp. 196-98, no. 108. See also Susan Stuart, “Gillows of Lancaster and London as a Design Source for American Chairs”, Antiques 155, no. 6 (June 1999): 866–75.
55. Alexandra Alevizatos Kirtley, “New Discoveries in Baltimore Painted Furniture,” The Catalogue of Antiques and Fine Art 3, no. 2 (Spring 2002): 204–9. Payments to the Finlays are in the following documents: April 20, 1808 ($228.17), Ledger, 1803–1820, Wye House; November 4, 1809 ($10), Ledger, 1803–1820, Wye House; February 7, 1812 ($114.86), Ledger, 1803–1820, Wye House; March 21, 1815 ($24), Ledger, 1803–1820, Wye House; April 3, 1828 ($14.75), receipt, ms. 2001, reel 29, MHS; August 16, 1833 ($10.25), receipt, ms. 2001 reel 30, MHS, and August 9, 1834 ($3.75), Ledger, 1803–1820, Wye House. The table was probably in the order placed by Edward V’s mother in 1808 or one of his orders in 1809, 1812, or 1815. The ledger entries for those four dates only record the amounts paid, whereas the entry for 1828 notes that Edward V paid Hugh Finlay $7 for each cornice.
56. See Alexandra Alevizatos Kirtley, “A New Suspect: Baltimore Cabinetmaker Edward Priestley (1778–1837),” in American Furniture, edited by Luke Beckerdite (Hanover, N. H.: University Press of New England for the Chipstone Foundation, 2000), pp. 101, 109, 113, 129(n10), 129 (n13), 131(n26), and 131(n34). For more on Priestley’s work, see pp.100–151.
57. Ibid., pp. 113–16.
58. Ibid., pp. 115–17.
59. Ibid., pp. 116–18. Receipt from Robert Ritherdon, July 24, 1798, ms. 2001, reel 21, MHS. See Sheraton, Drawing Book, pl. 24.
60. Kirtley, “A New Suspect,” pp. 117–18.
61. Ibid., p. 119. The handrail is supported by balusters and newel posts made by William Roney (active 1810–1826), a Baltimore turner who frequently collaborated with Priestley and billed Edward V directly.
62. Inventory of the Estate of Edward Lloyd VII. The Lloyd marble-topped chamber table possesses hallmarks of Baltimore classical furniture, such as wide reeding and the globular turned legs. A table with similarly turned legs (Research file S-15437, Museum of Early Southern Decorative Arts, Winston-Salem, North Carolina) bears the label of John Needles, but because many cabinetmakers purchased legs and other components from turners, it is impossible to attribute the chamber table to him.
63. See J. Thomas Scharf, The Chronicles of Baltimore (Baltimore: Turnbull Brothers, 1874), p. 409.
64. Inventory of the Estate of Edward Lloyd V. An inventory of Wye Heights taken before Edward VI moved from there is distinguishable from the Wye House inventory. A third list tabulates those objects that Edward VI purchased from the estate. Receipt, November 1834, ms. 2001, reel 15, MHS.
65. Baltimore architect Robert Cary Long (1800–1849) measured Wye Heights, and Baltimore carpenter Jeremiah L. Boyd (active 1814–1844) transformed it from a derelict old farmhouse to a Greek Revival monument. For documentation of the building of Wye Heights, see Bill of Jeremiah Boyd, July 24, 1827, ms. 2001, reel 27, MHS. Bill from Edward Priestley to Edward Lloyd VI, June 24, 1827, ms. 2001, reel 27, MHS. See also, Kirtley, “A New Suspect,” pp. 100, 119–22. Inventory of the Estate of Edward Lloyd VI. During the late 1820s and 1830s, Priestley repaired furniture for Edward V and made a secretary for his daughter Mary, who married William Tilghman Goldsborough.
66. Receipts dated October 7, 1825, and February 23, 1826, ms. 2001, reel 32, MHS. A Baltimore sideboard is incised “J. Williams,” possibly for John Williams (Decorative Arts Photographic Collection [hereafter cited DAPC], Winterthur Museum Library, 82.817). John A. Williams was apprenticed to Baltimore cabinetmaker John Denmead (active 1800–1810) in 1802 and purchased Denmead’s shop at 66 South Street in 1810. His brother James became a partner in 1818. Their firm was extremely successful and endured until 1878 despite John’s death in 1837 and James’ retirement in 1848 (John Henry Hill, “The Furniture Craftsmen of Baltimore, 1783–1823” [master’s thesis, University of Delaware, 1967], p. 166.) A table from their shop has a label in Spanish, which suggests they participated in the furniture export trade (DAPC, 84.872). The Ridgely family of Hampton House, Baltimore County, also ordered furniture from the Williams brothers in the late 1830s and 1840s (Hill, “The Furniture Craftsmen of Baltimore,” p. 166). Receipt from John and James Williams, September 30, 1837, ms. 2007, box 63, MHS. The wardrobe is related to one illustrated in Edgar G. Miller, Jr., American Antique Furniture, 2 vols. (Baltimore: Lord Baltimore Press, 1937), 2: 857; and another labeled by Baltimore cabinetmaker John Needles (active 1814–1852) at the Historical Society of Talbot County. Edward VI did acquire a “bureau and looking glass” from Needles in 1835, but the pervasiveness of such broad styles in the 1830s and the number of itinerant craftsmen working in a shop the size of Needles’ limits our ability to attribute the Lloyd wardrobe to him.
67. The design incorporates Egyptian-inspired motifs first published by English furniture designers in Thomas Sheraton’s Cabinet Dictionary (1803) and Thomas Hope’s Household Furniture and Interior Decoration (1807). The closest published parallel to the Lloyd press is shown on plate 33 of George Smith, The Cabinetmaker and Upholsterer’s Guide (1826).
68. Receipt, 1849, ms. 2001, reel 34, MHS. Between 1837 and 1846, Edward VI traveled to and from his lands in the deep South on several occasions. The properties in Louisiana, Arkansas, and Mississippi were advertised for sale in 1852, but he still owned some slaves and land in those states in 1858. Land and Slave Inventories, ms. 2001, reels 15 and 24, MHS. The armoire is part of a group that share creolized French and Spanish features. The elongated reeded legs date this armoire to the early 1820s. For more on Edward VI’s venture, see Tilghman, History of Talbot County, 2: 210–21.
69. Receipt from Tweed and Bonnell, undated, ms. 2001, box 28, MHS. Receipt from John and James Williams, October 5, 1832, ms. 2001, reel 30, MHS.
70. Partial Inventory of the Estate of Edward Lloyd V. Inventory of Edward Lloyd VI.
71. Ms. 2001, reel 30, MHS. Photographs at Wye House.
72. See miscellaneous receipts from William Ross between 1834 and 1844 and J. B. Mills between 1843 and 1844 in ms. 2001, reels 30–34, MHS.
73. Lloyd family tradition maintains that the blue suite was purchased in Baltimore from Hart Ware & Co., a firm with a wareroom there and in Philadelphia.
74. Frederick Douglass, My Bondage, My Freedom (1855; reprint, New York: Arno Press, 1968), pp. 66–68. |