2026 is filled with anniversaries, the most celebrated is, of course, the Semiquincentennial of the Declaration of Independence, a National Treasure signed 250 years ago blocks from where I write this. But there are 50 year, 100 year, and 300 year anniversaries to celebrate as well.

On the 14th day of the 4th month of 1726 (Julian calendar), the joiner John Head recorded in his account book that Casper Wistar ordered a “Chest of drawers and a Chamber table and an oval Table.” For these three objects, Wistar was debited 10 pounds. The whereabouts of the oval table is unknown, but the chest of drawers (high chest) and chamber table (dressing table) descended in the female line of the family and was a gift of Lydia Thompson Morris to the Philadelphia Museum of Art in 1928, just over 200 years after the pair were made.

The same year the Wistar family suite was gifted to the museum, Wallace Nutting (1861-1941) published his magnum opus, Furniture Treasury (Mostly of American Origin), All Periods of American Furniture with Some Foreign Examples in America Also American Hardware and Household Utensils. Macmillan Publishing Co., Inc. New York.

However, 1928 is not the anniversary we are celebrating. In 1976, fifty years ago, Macmillan published the thirteenth printing of Furniture Treasury.

The next year, while working in a well-known independent bookstore in Philadelphia, with my employee discount, I purchased my copy of Furniture Treasury hot off the press. With five thousand illustrations I was sure it would be the only book on American furniture I would ever need. (How wrong I was about that!)

I would read in Nutting that “The excellence and ornateness of the Philadelphia chairs have never been equaled in America elsewhere. ..” and that a characteristic of Philadelphia chairs is that the side rail extended entirely through the post with its tenon and is wedged in. The construction was very solid, and is commendable.” A lesson in aesthetics and construction in the description of one chair Philadelphia chair. Only four thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine lessons to go.

From the most opulent Philadelphia marble slab tables (top) to pages of chip carved spoon racks (bottom), Furniture Treasury had a bit of everything, including pages of images of brassware for furniture.1

As impressive as the 5,000 plates and the astonishing volume of representation of various forms from New England and the Mid-Atlantic colonies and states is, for me, the quality of manufacturing and bookbinding of Furniture Treasury, especially for a book in its thirteenth printing, years after the death of of its author who was no longer overseeing the books production, is as significant. In just a couple of months, I will have owed this copy for 50 years. I still refer to it almost weekly, but in early days I would consult it multiple times a day. I might have rifled through it well over 7,000 times and it lived in a workshop where it might be set down on rough lumber in the midst of planes and chisels. The cover is still intact, the binding has not loosened and every page is secure. I never had to treat it with kid gloves and I still don’t today.

Looking at my furniture history bookshelf, I see blue tape holding the binding together on, among others, Hornor’s Blue Book and every Antiques Magazine anthology. Don’t ask me about The Pennsylvania Spice Box book, which is now essentially a pile of loose pages.

So here’s to the Macmillan Publishing Co., Inc. who got it right, at least in the 1970s. I suspect I could hand the book to a 22 year old and it would last another lifetime.

I was sent photos of a previously unrecorded armchair stamped “VI,” or number 6, (see fig. 5). An armchair known only from a dealers advertisement and an illustration in Experts Choice: 1000 Years of the Art Trade, John Walker, 1983 is currently for sale by private treaty at Sotheby’s. I will list the chairs here in order of the Roman numerals stamped on their front seat rails.

I was sent photos of the armchair in fig. 5 and asked if it might be a part of this suite of chairs. My answer was a quick affirmative. It matches the other armchairs in every aspect of design, execution, and dimensions.

All the armchairs have iron brackets reinforcing the rear stile to crest rail joint. The armchair stamped “VI,” fig. 5, has an identical bracket at the same location as the other armchairs, fig. 9.

The splat of the armchair stamped “VI,” at the left in fig. 10, was flitch-cut from the same figured board as the splats in the armchairs stamped “II,” center , and “V,” right.

I have not examined the armchair currently available at Sotheby’s by private treaty. Sotheby’s catalogue entry cites the other armchairs from the set and records the numerals stamped on those armchairs in the essay, yet, oddly, does not cite the numeral on the armchair they are offering. Seven photos are included in the listing but there is not a photo of the back, so assessment of whether the iron brackets are present is not possible. The essay does not mention whether the original loose-seat is present or if so, what numeral is stamped on it. I’ve put an inquiry to Sotheby’s about these questions but have not received an answer at this time.

If the armchair currently being offered at Sotheby’s is part of the eight chair set, it must be stamped either “I” or “VII.”

Next up, further thoughts on the armchair at Sotheby’s, fig. 7, and the unmarked armchair, fig. 8, and its differences of design, construction, and materials.

A related tea table has long been in the collection of Winterthur Museum (fig.1). The table is described as walnut. I have not examined the table, though the single photo on Winterthur’s online collection site has me wondering if it might be mahogany rather than walnut. It is unusual for Philadelphia full-size round tea tables with a shaped top, leaf carving on the legs, and claw and ball feet to be made of walnut.

The diameter of the top, at 31 1/2 inches, is in the mid-range for a full-size Philadelphia round tea table.

Pook & Pook, Inc. sold a related table on October 4, 2019 (fig.2). The dimensions of the Pook & Pook table are nearly identical to the Winterthur table, allowing for some loss of height at the bottom of the feet of the latter.

The pattern of the shaped top has twelve repeats. A bell flower has been added to the bottom of the leg carving. The leaf carving in the panel at the top of the leg is surrounded by punch-work.

On October 17, 2024, a third tea table related to the large ceremonial table was sold at Brunk Auctions. This is the first table where two dimensions are given for the top, along the grain and across the grain, showing a 3/8 inch shrinkage across the grain (assuming the measurements are accurate). A fairly insubstantial amount of shrinkage considering the width of the single mahogany board, suggesting wood with adequate seasoning for its size.

The shaped top and turned pillar of the Brunk table is identical to the Pook & Pook and Winterthur tables showing a marked consistency of the shops approach to round tea tables. There are minor variations in the carving on the legs but all retain the general method seen in the large ceremonial table including a panel with a spray of leaves at the top of the leg.

The thick finish on the Brunk table makes it difficult to determine if the punch-work was made with a single punch - a nail filed to a point at the end - or a gang-of-four punch. In either case, punch-work in eighteenth century carved work is primarily seen on grounds, it helps obscure an often uneven surface difficult to smooth with carving tools, especially in areas of changing grain direction (fig. 6).

If an exact date of an object is unknown I typically prefer suggesting a “circa” date which presumes the object could have been made with in a ten year span, five years on either side of the given “circa” date. This way of proposing dates for these tables, however, is problematic. Brunk Auctions dates their table “1745-1755,” Pook & Pook, Inc. dates theirs “circa 1750,” Winterthur’s table is dated “1750-1765.” 1745 may be pushing the earliest date, 1765 is too late. Until better evidence based on fact turns up, I suggest the tables were made between the very late 1740s - 1748-49, to the mid-to latish 1750s - 1757-58. Samuel Harding, whose shop the carving on the tables could be attributed to, is first recorded working in Philadelphia by 1749/50 and died in 1758.

Accurate dating of the tables, particular the large ceremonial table whose inscription suggests Samuel Coates presented it to the Pennsylvania Hospital, becomes important when looking at the merchant Samuel Coates’ life dates. Coates was a toddler at the earliest dating of the table and about 10 years old at the latest. He could not have commissioned the table between 1751 when the Hospital was founded and 1755 when the building was completed. Coates’ connection with the Hospital began in 1785. He was secretary of the institution from 1786- 1812 and its president from 1812 to 1825 when he retired.

Research continues into the questions of who originally ordered the table and how it was intended to be used. When did Coates become associated with the table and what event caused the inscription to be carved on the top plate of the box?

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I’ve been very busy the past week and a half working on a number of projects and haven’t had the time I normally would to produce content here. But I wanted to put something up so this will be a post of mainly photographs of an object I suspect no one who subscribes to this Substack has seen in person even though it has been in a public institution since 1949, and maybe only a handful of you have ever seen photographic details. It is clearly a ceremonial object based on the, technically superior, carved inscription on top of the box and its massive top diameter of over 4 feet, perhaps the largest single mahogany board ever used in North American colonial furniture. I’ll add a few captions, enjoy the photo.

As easy as it is today to examine colonial American furniture from the first half of the eighteenth century, either physically or from images in books or online, it’s easy to forget the dramatic changes that occurred in design and construction in the middle of the 1730s. Rails that divided drawers in case furniture went from 1/2 inch thick, dadoed to the sides, to 3/4 - 7/8 inch thick rails dovetailed or half-dovetailed to the sides, providing a more robust carcase frame work. Cabriole legs replaced turned legs of high chests, dressing tables, and formal chairs. Sides of dressing tables and lower cases of high chests could now be tenoned to the extensions of the legs, doing away with easily damaged turned legs and stretchers whose only junction with the dovetailed box they support are short, round tenons on the top of the legs fit to round mortises in a block of wood glued into the corners of the carcase. Technically, that is not joined construction.

Look at the two high chests in fig. 1. While the high chest on the left was made by John Head in 1726, there is no case furniture attributed to him with third-phase construction before he ceased furniture making in 1745. His high chests of the 1730 would have the same appearance as his chests of the 1720s. The maple chest on the right in fig. 1 was completed in 1738 when James Logan purchased 19 brass handles, 3 escutcheons and 2 suits of drawer locks from the Philadelphia merchant Joseph Paschall.1 It has not a single turned component.

For turners this was a dramatic development. Their work defined the earlier style, but by 1740, cabinetmakers and chair-makers did not necessarily need the services of turners.2

By the late 1730s, arched (triangular) and ogee pediments were first used on Philadelphia case furniture. Derived from English architectural design books, they were at first employed on ceremonial objects and desk and bookcases. Several Philadelphia desk and bookcases with second-phase construction and ogee pediments survive from the 1730s. Elaborate desk and bookcases were expensive, high status objects, the most ornamented and complex objects then produced by cabinetmakers. Made from the finest materials and crafted with great skill and precision, they were symbols of an owners economic achievements and erudition. (fig. 2, left).

Over the next 30 years, high chests continued to be fashionable in Philadelphia while their popularity receded elsewhere in the Atlantic world. Ogee, scroll, and arched pediments were now styled for high chests. Over time, high chests became a showcase for elaborate ornamental carving (fig. 3).

Turning played a roll, however modest in these new designs. Turned finials, plain or with a carved top component, either three, at the center and sides (fig. 3, left), or two, with a central carved ornament (fig. 3, right), often completed the ornamental design of cornices.

Philadelphia turners employed the same process in creating turned finials they did in making turned legs. Holes are bored through the large urn component, the holes plugged, and the urn turned on the lathe. Upper and lower components are round tenoned to the urn.

All three finials in fig. 5 are made of three components. Vertical, short grain of the reels adjacent to the round tenons of the upper and lower components often results in damage as the finials are mishandled over time (fig. 5, left). The finials at the center and right in fig. 5 display the first versions of carving designs of the upper components. The three-component design eased carving as the large urn did not interfere with carving tool manipulations (fig. 5, center) and the possibility of the tip of the carving tools damaging contiguous components (fig. 5, right).

In Philadelphia by the early 1760s, the carved flame finial was fashionable for ornamenting high chests, chest on chests, and clock case pediments. Fig. 6 illustrates three variations. All are made from three components.

Fig. 6 illustrates an unusual flame finial made of four components. The veiner gouge work could be accomplished with no risk of damage to the bead of the reel beneath it.

Eighty miles west of Philadelphia, a regional school of cabinetmaking flourished in the city of Lancaster, producing round tea tables, desks and bookcases, chest on chests, and high chests influenced by furniture brought by Philadelphia elites to Lancaster beginning in the mid 1750s. However, they did not reproduce Philadelphia craftsmen’s three and four-part finials. All surviving finials adorning Lancaster case furniture were turned and carved from a solid wood blank (fig. 7).

Eight turning tools are included Abraham Whiteall’s (Gloucester, New Jersey, 1720 - Philadelphia 1744) probate inventory, yet the high chest he inscribed with his full name required no turning. Beginning his apprenticeship by 1734, he would have been taught the arts and mysteries of turning along with joinery. Yet by the time of his death, the only turning he might be called on to produce were urn or ball and spire finials for tall case clocks.

In the last several articles I’ve been discussing a small group of early eighteenth century Philadelphia turned tables and chests whose legs are comprised of four separate components. These objects are anomalies as the overwhelming majority early eighteenth century turned legs of tables and chests in Philadelphia are made of two pieces, the pillar between the carcase and stretcher, and a foot, under the stretcher. This holds true for other North American colonies and England. I’ve not seen a New England turned leg I was certain was made of more than two components. If anyone can contradict this, especially if the legs have been x-rayed, I’d love to know. Fig. 1 shows leg fragments of the pillars of a New England dressing table in the Winterthur Museum Collection made from of one piece of wood. Turned, round tenons attached the leg to the carcase and at the bottom of the pillar, round tenons pass through both the stretcher and feet.

I chose the dressing table in fig 2 to illustrate a Philadelphia circa 1720 turned legs made from two components for several reasons. First, I haven’t accessed the collections website in some time and recently, doing research there for another project, I found that they have uploaded numerous images for certain objects that were not present in the recent past. The table in fig. 2 has 19 images.

Second, I had a theory that the stretchers of the Yale table were replaced, or at least the fifth, center foot had been added long after the table was originally constructed, possibly by the same person who worked on the table at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Some time ago I determined that the stretchers and center foot and final of the dressing table in the article above were replaced in the late 1920s.

Examining the bottom of the feet in an image posted on Yale’s website, three appear to be original, due to wear, patina, and apparent water damage. The centers of the feet were bored through, and the round tenon from the pillar turning, with evidence of a depression left from a conical metal lathe point, is visible.1 There is no boring on the center foot, but more important, it has none of the wood deterioration seen in the original feet. The patina on the bottom of the stretchers does not appear authentic and the curves are problematic in their design. The PMA table with the added center foot was published in 1928 and tables with same unusual triangular ending of the stretchers had also been published by that time. The restoration of the Yale table’s stretchers and center foot were likely based the tables previously published related tables.

Chests of drawers made in the same shops as high chest and dressing tables dealt with turned feet in a comparable, though less complex, manner (fig.4). A boring in the foot accepts a turned dowel which extends up through attached blocks and bottom board. With the lower drawer removed, the top of the dowel is visible. The dowel is always made of a different wood species, most often hard pine (fig. 4).

The turned feet of the chest in figs. 5 & 6 are attached in the same manner as the chest in fig. 4. The wood boards nailed or pegged to the bottom boards provide a more secure attachment, allowing the turned dowel to be embedded in 1 3/4 inches of wood rather than the 7/8 inches of the bottom board alone. In fig. 6, a wedge at the end of the dowel to aid in securing it to the foot is visible.

The majority of restored feet are not fabricated like the originals. Bored holes are not present in the bottom of the restored feet of the chest on chest attributed to John Head in fig. 7.2

In the mid-1730s, new furniture technologies replaced chests with thin rails between their drawers, with thick railed carcases. Bracket feet replaced turned feet on chests of drawers, while cabriole legs now supported high chests and dressing tables instead of the frequently brilliant turned legs and shaped stretchers. In Philadelphia, the earliest dated cabriole legs ended in scroll feet. In a very few instances, carved scroll feet took the place of turned “ball” feet on Philadelphia chests and chest on chests. Instead of turned feet, the chest on chest in fig. 8 has carved scroll feet with a round tenon worked at its top, fit to holes bored through blocks and the bottom board of the chest.

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I’ll end here with a slide I made in 1999 and photographed later on a light table with an early digital camera, so excuse the quality for the information it contains (fig.9).

This foot assemble was loose and nearly fell off an elaborate desk in the PMA furniture conservation studio during treatment in preparation for the Worldly Goods exhibition. When removed for repair and re-glueing, we found that the mahogany foot facings were glued to a vertical grain block on which a round tenon had been cut, allowing to fit into a hole bored in the bottom of the desk. In the image you should be able to make out the witness of a compass divider that scribed a circle used as a reference to form the round tenon. We were familiar with a technique that began to be used on Philadelphia compassed chairs in the mid-1730s, where front legs are attached by a round tenons cut at the top of the legs fit to holes bored through the seat rails, but this was the first time we saw the technique used in case furniture and it still is the only time I’ve come across it.3

As happens so often, what I think will be a short tale of historic furniture, quickly becomes complicated. There are many ways to continue this conversation. How does the history of turning in Philadelphia foreshadow Philadelphia chair makers development of compassed chairs with horizontal seat rails having legs attached with round tenons worked at the top? How were those round tenons cut? Who or what shop made the first chairs using that technology? Is it a fact that this technique is a distinctive characteristic that is unique to Philadelphia? Why were holes bored in turned feet and inverted cups of chests and tables? How do you control the seasoning and drying of 6 inch walnut scantling?

In a different direction, what happened to wood turners after 1740? Look at the Wistar family high chest and dressing table suite in comparison to the chest on chest in fig. 8. Exceptional and imaginative turning on the suite, zero turning on the chest on chest.

I started this Substack in the middle of a cold January 2026. After 29 articles we’ve reached July 4th. I want to thank all the subscribers who are following along. I was glad to stay inside for a couple of hours today to pen the 30th article for you on yet another 100 degree day in Philadelphia.

Wood grain, figuring, and pores are visible in properly exposed x-rays. The grain of the two black walnut legs in fig. 1 is clearly visible.

When we examined the x-rays of the PMA dressing table with legs made of four component parts we noticed something surprising, there was no discernible wood grain or pores visible. The legs could not have been made of black walnut (See fig. 2 & 3).

Notice the repaired damage to the foot and pillar and added modern wire brads at the right in fig. 3.

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When the dressing table in fig. 4 came to auction, it was determined that the feet were made of red cedar, not mahogany as the rest of the table was. It has since been determined that the legs of the table in fig. 2 are also red cedar. When the table in fig. 4 sold at auction, first in 2007 and later in 2011, there were potential bidders who had difficulty accepting the idea of several wood species used in the legs. Might the feet be replaced some thought?

The single drawer dressing table in fig. 5 was first published in Nutting in 1928. No wood species for the table were given.1 In 2016, Christie’s determined the carcase to be mahogany and the legs maple. It sold for an impressive $665,000. By the time of the sale, it seems most had become comfortable with the idea of the use of mixed hardwoods in early eighteenth century turned leg chests and tables.

The legs of the table in fig. 5 are made of two separate turnings, the pillar above the stretcher, and the foot below which the pillar is round tenoned to. The Christie’s essay for the table contrasts the turning of the pillar to that of the tables in fig. 2 & 4 by citing the “severe undercut between the inverted cups and tapering columnar turnings” of the legs of the two tables. But since the inverted cup component of the legs of the tables in figs. 2 & 4 are separate turnings, the “undercut,” or rather the perpendicular cut on the pillar, is technically necessary to allow the bead on the conical component below to easily make a flush join with the cup.

The inverted cup and foot components have holes bored through them before being mounted on the lathe. Tapered plugs inserted at either end accept the head and tail stock points of the lathe. This insures the boring is centrally located when the turning is completed. Notice in the disassembled view how the bead at the bottom of the baluster component above the cup is undercut, allowing it to seamlessly join the curved surface of the top of the cup.

The pillar of the leg at the left in fig. 5 is single piece of wood, the pillar of the leg at the right is made of three pieces as seen in fig. 6.

This is a point perhaps only readers who are turners will immediately grasp - with the inverted cup and the tapered column below being separate components, a bead could easily be turned at the top of the column that sits directly under the wide, flat base of the inverted cup form when the leg is assembled. The bead could not be turned on the pillar if it had been a single piece of wood. This is a significant feature of the three objects with legs made of four components, and is most striking on the two dressing tables with their elaborately scrolled stretchers that feature an abundance of semicircular design devices that directly relate to the numerous three-dimensional turned beads on the legs and china stand.

The beads and coves theme continues throughout the tables as the stretchers, legs, and shaped rails work together to produce an accomplished and skillful unified design.

A short post to announce I will be participating in a panel discussion in conjunction with the exhibition “BA Harrington: Suite Américaine” at the Museum for Art in Wood, April 3 - July 26, 2026. I’m pleased to join BA Harrington, the artist who’s works are being exhibited, and Justina Barrett, the Chief Learning and Engagement Officer at the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, one of the nation’s largest archives of historical documents, founded in 1824.

The free event takes place in person at the Museum for Art in Wood, Friday July 24, 2026, 6:30 - 7:30 pm ET.

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Two dressing tables share characteristics of the high chest discussed in the previous article. One, in walnut, has been in the collection of the Philadelphia Museum of Art since 1925 (fig. 1). A second, in mahogany and red cedar, entered the collection of Chipstone in 2011 (fig.2).

The arched design of the front rail of the PMA table is identical to the high chest; a filet has been added between the double arches at the center of the front rail of the Chipstone table. Both tables have a pair of arches on their sides.

The shared design of the distinctive turned leg profile of the chest and two tables is unmistakable (fig. 4). Minor differences appear due to the nature of hand-workmanship, slight variations in prepared stock sizes, difference in height between the chest and table legs, and the time lapse between the commissions.

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A series of x-radiographs (commonly called x-rays) of two dressing tables and two high chests were made in 1999 in the months proceeding the “Worldly Goods” exhibition at the Philadelphia Museum of Art (fig. 5). The results were used to determine condition and allow us to accurately describe details of construction. The legs of the high chest from the previous article and the tables in figs. 1 and 2 are assembled from four separate, turned elements.

As there were many turned leg objects in the “Worldly Goods" exhibition, I made the components of the most complicated leg constructions in the exhibition, the four component, plus stretcher, legs of the dressing tables in figs. 1 &2 (figs 6 & 7) as an aid when giving tours and demonstrations in the galleries and the conservation studio. Holes bored in the inverted cup, foot, and stretcher accept the turned, round tenons of the upper baluster and long cone components.1

The reproduction leg is faithful to the original, turned on a relatively slow spinning lathe and left straight from the turning tools with no additional abrasive sanding, leaving the evidence of the turning tools on the wood surface.

If the turnings of these two tables can be described as “audacious,” what should be said about those stretchers? We’ll have a look at that next.

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The high chest in fig. 1 has been on loan to the Philadelphia Museum for Art since 1940. When it came to the museum, it was owned by the Commissioners of Fairmount Park. In 2010, “the historic Fairmount Park Commission was officially consolidated with the city's Department of Recreation to create a unified Department of Parks and Recreation.”1 I suspect it is now under their ownership. The brass pulls and escutcheons are replaced, the applied bead along the bottom rails has been trimmed flush with the carcase, and laminations for width are missing from the stretchers.

Aside from its brief appearance in the Worldly Goods exhibition at the PMA, October 10, 1999 to January 2, 2000, the chest has been in storage. As a loaned object, it is not illustrated on the museum’s website.

An unusual detail of the chest is the simple line inlay of the drawer fronts.2 Chests on high stands, like the chest in fig. 1 were popular in England and its colonies from the turn of the eighteenth century into the 1730s.3

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All the drawers of the chest are a simple first-phase construction, the sides are lap-dovetailed to the fronts and through-dovetailed to the backs. The flush, riven cedar bottom boards are nailed to a rebate in the drawer front and to the sides and backs. The two short-drawers in the upper-case have wood spring locks installed, as seen in fig. 5.

One unusual feature of this chest is the numerals added to the interior surfaces of the drawer sides and backs indicating the height of the drawer openings. For the drawer in fig. 7, the height of the drawer back (or sides), added to the thickness of the bottom, and the distance from the tops of the sides to the top of the drawer front is seven and a half inches.

The numerals on the drawers, while atypical and rarely seen, are not, however, the brilliant solution of the title of this article. The joiners of this chest solved the problem of binding and friction created by flush bottoms of drawers riding on full dustboards in their own unique way.

Adam Bowett describes a technological development in drawer construction at the beginning of the eighteenth century, whereby the bottom board was raised and runners were applied at the sides preventing drawers binding and reducing friction. This allowed the dustboards to be made thinner, as the weight of the drawers was now transferred to the sides. Fig. 7 illustrates two ways this was done. At the top, a dado the same thickness of the dustboard is plowed in the side and enlarged at the front of the carcase for the rail. Below, a dado the same size as the rail is plowed and the dustboard is secured with wedges. The dustboard remains flush with the top of the rail.

The joiner of this chest had the brilliant idea that allowed him to reduce friction but continue to make his drawers with flush nailed on bottoms by plowing the dado at the bottom of the dustboard, not the top, with runners added to the top of the dustboard, flush with the top of the rail. Fig. 7 illustrates how the dustboard sits below the rail and a runner is glued to it at the side.

Fig. 8 is a view of the dustboard and rail from below. The bottom of the rail and the dustboard are flush.

This construction variant is not mentioned in either Adam Bowett, English Furniture, 1660-1714, From Charles II to Queen Anne. Antique Collectors’ Club, 2002, or Adam Bowett, Early Georgian Furniture, 1715-1740. Antique Collectors’ Club, 2009. I have not seen this technique described elsewhere and have not seen another chest that employs it. Can it be that this technique was developed in a single shop and passed into history with the next advance in carcase and drawer construction in the mid-1730s?

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Historic seating furniture was often covered in leather. Today few examples of this treatment survive but it is straightforward to determine if the original cover of an eighteenth century loose seat was leather. The loose seat in fig. 1 retains its original webbing, sack cloth, horsehair stuffing, linen cover, and black leather show upholstery.

The loose seat in fig. 1 is from the chair in fig. 2. It can be seen on the museum’s website here.

Thick leather cannot be pleated going around curves as done with wool and silk fabrics. Upholsters need to cut away sections of leather as it is pulled around the loose seat frame; every tab is then individually nailed to the bottom of the frame. In fig. 3, the knife marks left from slicing the leather are clearly visible. Also present are marks from the knife cutting away excess once the leather cover is secured to the frame. If a loose seat has these knife marks, it was upholstered with leather in the past, if not, it wasn’t.

As seen in fig. 5, the leather the upholsterer was working with was not large enough to be folded over to the lower surface of the frame and had to be nailed to the edge along a section of the rear rail.

If you refer back to fig.1 you will notice that the front and side rails of the seat frame are black walnut while the rear rail is hard pine. By the late 1730s Philadelphia chair-makers had developed a technique where the seat rim and loose seat frame of compassed chairs were constructed from the same boards. An over-size seat frame was put together with mortise and tenon joints, then what would become the seat rim was sawn off the front and sides, resulting in the seat rim perfectly matching the curves of the loose seat frame. As there is no rear seat rim, the rear rail of the loose seat frame could be made of a less costly secondary wood species.

Some chair-makers took this construction method a step further and sawed the front of the seat frame, the front seat rim, and the front rail of the loose seat from a single board resulting in the grain of the seat frame and seat rim being virtually continuous, minus only the saw kerf from re-sawing, see fig. 9.

My most recent find of a loose seat originally upholstered in leather was a Philadelphia armchair sold at Freeman’s Auction in November 2025. None of the original upholstery material survives but evidence of knife marks from trimming the leather are present, figs. 10-11.

The armchair at Freeman's was converted to a close stool at some point. That the chair underwent this conversion - combined with the other damage and replacements it sustained - it is astonishing that the original loose seat survives.

The detail of the seat frame and seat rim in fig. 13 illustrates how the seat rim/ loose seat/seat frame combination was constructed on the front of the chair. Notice how the seat frame joint perfectly aligns with the seat rim joint and the grain of the front seat frame and seat rim matches. That is because the front seat frame and front seat rim - along with the front loose seat rail - were sawn from the same piece of wood. On the sides, only the seat rim and loose seat were sawn from a single piece of wood; on this armchair, matching the grain of the seat rim and seat frame was not a priority on the sides. On the seat rim, the haunch of the mortise and tenon joint made in the over-sized loose seat is visible. On chairs where the seat rim is not sawn off the joined loose seat, this haunch is not present., the front and side seat rims are merely butted together.

Trapezoidal loose seats covered in leather will also display knife marks where the leather has been cut to create “pleats.” All the original upholstery materials survive on the loose seat in fig. 14. A modern green baize covers the original black leather cover.

Just a few years earlier, in 1986, the first piece of American furniture soared past the 1 million dollar amount, when Eddy Nicholson paid $1,045,000 for a Philadelphia carved mahogany round-top tea table at Christie’s, New York.1

Philadelphia tea tables have produced several auctions records in the years since the first million dollar table in 1986. A similar form sold at Christie’s New York, October 3, 2007 for $6,761,000, a record price for Philadelphia furniture. The table went on loan to the Philadelphia Museum of Art shortly after the auction. I examined the table during the auction preview in New York; when it arrived at the museum I was able to have a closer look and make better photographs than possible at the auction house. Nineteen years later, here are some of those photos.

Round top tea tables made in Philadelphia during the eighteenth century are constructed with tops that both turn and “fold”, allowing the top to be tilted to an upright position and moved to the side or corner of a room when not in use.2

A box made of a top and bottom plate and four small turned pillars fits over the top element of the main pillar of the table.3 The box is secured to the pillar with a turned ring and a wedge fit to a mortise in the pillar. Small round tenons on one edge of the top plate of the box fit in holes bored in the cleats under the top allowing the top to tilt to the upright position.

The amount of ornamental carving is surpassed only by a closely related table that coincidentally sold at Sotheby’s New York only three months after the table in fig. 1.

Cast-brass casters are screwed flush to the feet. With no wear to the bottom of the feet, shop score lines are still present. Some shops chose to recess the casters by chopping a mortise into the bottom of the foot.

Forged-iron plates were nailed or screwed to the bottom of the pillar and legs of round-top tea tables and candlestands to reinforce the sliding dovetail joints that attach the legs to the pillar.

In the photo of the upper surface of the top (fig. 8), it is possible to discern the multiple, discontinuous finish layers applied to the table over the decades. The table appears not to have had any of its multiple layers of finish removed. As one layer of finish began to fail, another was added in an attempt to improve the appearance of the surface. This is generally done without knowledge of how different finishes will interact over time, hence the distressed and darkened appearance of the surface coating today obscuring the figuring of the mahogany top.

A carved Philadelphia tea table that sold at Sotheby’s in January 2008 was put on view in New York in the fall of 2007 at the same time as the record setting tea table at Christie’s. Sotheby’s table had been published by William Macpherson Hornor, Jr. in his Blue Book, Philadelphia Furniture, William Penn to George Washington, Philadelphia, 1935, Pl. 223 and given the critical approbation “The Acme of Perfection in American Piecrust Tables.” (See fig. 9.)4 Christie’s catalogue description of their table was confusing to me as it seemed to imply that Hornor’s glorification of the table being sold at Sotheby’s could also be applied to their newly discovered table. It was unclear whether in the first sentence below “this” refers to the Sotheby’s or Christie’s table. The second sentence unquestionably is about the Christie’s table, as it characterizes the finish as old and darkened, and that the table had never been out of the family, both statement can only describe their table. I was unaware the “fig. 1” in the passage below was an illustration of Sotheby’s table, as none of the 8 illustration mentioned in the catalogue are included in the Christie’s current website.

From Christie’s catalogue:

“Described by William MacPherson Hornor as "The Acme of Perfection in American Piecrust Tables," the design of this magnificent tea table stands as the most successful of the renowned Philadelphia form (fig. 1). The table survives in a remarkable state of preservation, the base with its old surface darkened over the years, and its feet with the original casters. Never out of the family and previously undocumented, this table stands as one of the most important discoveries in recent years.”

The record price table in fig. 1 has what has been variously termed in the trade as an “original,” “untouched,” “accumulated,” or “historic” finish. The table in fig. 10 has been refinished, perhaps more than once, and currently has what appears to be a single, thin varnish layer. Refinishing has contributed to some abrasion and degradation in crispness of the carving. I am not aware of finish samples being taken for analysis from either table.

The table in fig. 10 that sold at Sotheby’s had been known to the public since at least 1935. The table in fig. 1 was consigned to Christie’s by a direct descendent of the original owner. It has been in the Philadelphia region since it was made and was in a home on the Main Line before members of Christie’s staff drove it to New York for the October 2007 auction.

To a considerable extent, I wrote the last article to start a dialogue with myself to ruminate on who made the turned and joined splay-leg tables, where were they made, who were they made for, how were they used, and how should we think about them today.

I catalogued and photographed the Dietrich American Foundation tables (figs. 4 and 7 in the previous article) in 2013. I was familiar with the form but had never been asked to treat an example of one and couldn’t think of any museum that had one on display or even in storage.

With 5,000 plates in Wallace Nutting’s Furniture Treasury, it is not surprising that there are several examples of this table form illustrated in his omnibus survey of seventieth, eighteenth, and early nineteenth century American furniture.

The form of the turned and joined splay-leg table in plate 1291 in Nutting’s Furniture Treasury is identical in form to the Dietrich tables. The table in plate 1296, owned by J. Stogdell Stokes (1870–1947) (President of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, 1933-1947) differs in that the legs are attached to cleats under the top and T-stretchers join the legs above the feet. The T-stretcher allows you to sit closer to the table without interference from a triangular stretcher arrangement, perhaps the reason for the design.

Sometime after cataloguing the Dietrich tables I was surprised to come across a related table in the Philadelphia Museum of Art’s off-site storage (fig. 4.)

The PMA’s table was accessioned in 1952. I cannot find it illustrated on the museum’s collection website. It likely has never been photographed or displayed in the museum galleries. There is a high probability it will spend the rest of its days in deep storage - where it has spent the last three-quarters of a century - used and seen by no one.

During my research in 2013 I found related British tables referred to as “cricket tables” in books on British furniture. In fig. 5, one table has vertical legs and triple upper and lower rails, while a second has splayed legs and an inventive Y-stretcher not seen on any of the American tables. As I know next to nothing of the game of cricket, the significance of the term “cricket table” is unclear to me. Without dimensions given, we don’t know if the tables are a standard height of around 28 inches or are closer to stool height. Were they used as tables or low stands?

I’ve had several questions about how I dated the tables in the previous article, assigning them to the fourth-quarter of the eighteenth century. The tables are difficult to date with precision for various reasons. Many signifiers, such as changes in style and construction used to date objects are absent in the tables. None of the tables are signed or dated. None have a provenance earlier than their twentieth century owners. There is no brassware or nails present that would help in dating the tables. The large round table in fig. 4 in the last article has a wood top microscopically identified as Eastern white pine. It is rare to find this wood species in Southeastern Pennsylvania before the 1780s. This gives me a high degree of confidence that table was made in the last decades of the eighteenth century, but dating remains speculative for these tables.

Fundamentally, it is a question of over how long a time span you believe this table form was made. Were similar tables made over the span of almost a century or were they popular with customers for a decade or two?

Turned and joined splay-leg tables continue to surface from time to time in Southeastern Pennsylvania. Most tables have been striped of their original paint, including, it seems, the tables illustrated in Nutting. Besides the two Dietrich tables I’ve only come across one other turned and joined splay-leg table with original paint beneath later layers of paint or varnish, though there must be others out there.

I’ll leave this discussion where we began, with a true Windsor table at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. (Fig. 7.) We’re on more solid ground when dating Windsor tables and stands as the stylistic development of Windsor arm and side chairs has been thoroughly researched and published.1 Philadelphia chair-makers and cabinetmakers made the first Windsor armchairs in the mid to late 1740s. By the middle of the 1750s, the production of Windsor chairs in Philadelphia had grown rapidly. By the late 1760s, a long tapered leg, like that seen on the table in fig. 7, began to replace legs ending in a turned ball foot. Catalogued when it entered the Met’s collection in 1947, the table in fig. 7 is dated 1725-1790, its place of manufacture is given as New England, wood species are said to be “Tulip poplar, maple, ash.” Our current knowledge of Windsor chair design suggests the table should not be dated prior to 1765 and might have been made as late as 1790. The wood species and design of the turned elements makes clear the table was made in Southeastern Pennsylvania, probably Philadelphia, not New England.2

It is a mystery why the Met’s table in fig. 7 was not included in Morrison H. Heckscher’s American Furniture in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Late Colonial Period: The Queen Anne and Chippendale Styles, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Random House, New York, New York, 1985. It was the gift of Mrs. J. Insley Blair (1883-1951), a major collector of Americana who had donated dozens of objects to the Met and the table was known to be a rare object since the early twentieth century.

I have no doubt that if Morrie had catalogued the table for his publication, the 1947 information, still current on the Met’s website, would have been correctly updated.

Over his lifetime, H. Richard Dietrich Jr (1938–2007) assembled an extensive and diverse collection of American art and artifacts. Dietrich began to collect in earnest after he established a nonprofit institution—The Dietrich American Foundation—in 1963. Books and manuscripts were his first focus, but his collecting expanded to include American furniture, Pennsylvania German fraktur, silver, Chinese export porcelain, whale-trade objects, and paintings. Dietrich purchased his first examples of American Windsor seating furniture in 1966. Through the following twenty-two years, Dietrich created a small but carefully chosen and notable grouping of American Windsor furniture, creating a significant subset of objects in the Foundation’s American furniture collection. While all the Windsor seating furniture Dietrich collected was ultimately bequeathed to the Foundation at the time of his death, for many years they would remain in his personal collection as part of the furnishings of his home.

Dietrich purchased the Windsor stand in fig. 1 from a Massachusetts dealer in 1970. It is not known whether at that time Dietrich understood the great rarity of Windsor stands or that surviving stands were almost exclusively produced in Southeastern Pennsylvania, though he may have been familiar with a closely related example illustrated in Antiques, October 1924.1 The Dietrich Windsor stand has been on loan to the Burlington County Historical Society, Burlington, New Jersey, since 1977.

The Windsor stand is constructed in true Windsor fashion with legs that are socketed through the top and wedged. There is a red semi-opaque wash over the entire stand including the lower surface of the top. On top of the red is a black coating with a craquelure texture. These opaque painted surfaces do not allow an identification by eye for the wood species of the top. It appears to be a diffuse porous wood, possibly yellow poplar.

The top was turned on a lathe to create the subtle moulded rim and rounded edge. The top had a relatively high moisture content when the table was assembled and shows significant distortion. It has shrunk 3/4 of an inch across the grain even though the top was only 15 1/4 inches in diameter when the table was assembled.

In addition to the Windsor stand in fig. 1, Dietrich also collected two Southeastern Pennsylvania tables with turned baluster-style legs, ball feet, and upper and lower rails tenoned and pegged to the legs. The tops of this type of table were attached to the base with pegs or nails driven from the top into the upper rails, or, on the largest tables, into a cleat notched through two of the rails attached to the top with pegs. The table in fig. 4 was purchased at the Pennypacker Auction Centre, Reading, Pennsylvania, May 26^th, 1969, lot 326, another early acquisition. The original green paint survives under later varnish coats.

The top of the table in fig. 4 has been microscopically identified as Eastern white pine. The legs, lower rails, two of upper rails, and the cleat are maple, the third upper rail is hard pine. The cleat, nearly the length of the top, fits in notches in two of the upper rails. Five pegs attach the two-board, white pine top to the cleat. Two pegs are driven through the top into each upper rail. The underside edge of the top is slightly chamfered to a scribed line 7/8 of an inch from the edge.

The pegs through the cleat are trimmed where the knees of a person sitting at the table would come in contact with them. The single peg inside the upper rails is left untrimmed. The peg is perfectly square and neatly chamfered to a point.

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Almost 20 years separates the acquisition of the table in fig. 4 and the table in fig. 7, which was discovered in a dealers booth at the 1988 Philadelphia Antiques Show. Its excellent condition, including an original surface consisting of green paint over a light blue primer coat, under a later green paint, might alone have persuaded Dietrich to pursue the table, but I suspect the fact that the top is oval, not the common round or square shape, would ultimately have convinced Dietrich to add the table to his collection.

The single-board hard pine top is heavily chamfered on the bottom edge and is attached to the base with a single peg in each rail. There is no cleat.

The tables in figs. 4 and 7 are not technically Windsor furniture as the legs are not socketed to the the top (or seat as in a Windsor chair) and they employ mortise and tenon joinery in the stretcher-to-leg joints rather than turned stretchers with round tenons fit to holes bored in the legs. That said, who would have sat around these tables and what would that have sat on? What do these tables say about the chairs that would have been used around them? I think true Windsor side chairs would be right at home assembled around the tables, whether the tables are true Windsors or not.

One more question. The Windsor stand in fig. 1 was undoubtedly made by a Windsor chair maker. Though I’ve dated it after the Revolution, it’s possible it was made earlier. Any Windsor chair maker could easily have produced it with much less effort than making a side chair. Drafting the delicate design of the legs, twenty-five inches tall versus sixteen inches of a side chair leg, but with the same diameter, would be a challenge, but that had been accomplished by Philadelphia Windsor chair makers who elongated the leg designs of side chairs for their high-chair Windsors.

But who made the “Windsor adjacent” tables? Did Windsor chair makers collaborate with joiners or did a cabinet-shop combine mortise and tenon joinery with legs purchased from turners to produce a large, stronger version of a true Windsor table at an economical price point compared to walnut or mahogany tilt-top tea tables?

Thomas Tufft was a native born cabinetmaker who worked in Philadelphia from the late 1760s until 1788.2 He was identified in the early 1920s as the master of a cabinet shop when his label was found on the interior surface of the bottom board of the top long drawer of a dressing table.3 Since that time, his labels have been found in the en-suite high chest of the dressing table just mentioned, and several side chairs. Original invoices and bills survive including that for the bridal furniture of Deborah Norris (1761-1839) and George Logan (1753-1821) ordered by Deborah’s mother, Mary Parker Norris (1731-1799) from Tufft in 1783.4

All six boards and the cleats on the lid are hard pine. The chest is through-dovetailed with a nailed on bottom board.

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The chest was likely made for packing goods for shipping. Tufft’s label would be affixed to the chest as advertising for his wares or as identification for payment when the shipment arrived at its destination. What furniture items could be shipped in a chest this size is not readily apparent. Tufft may have bartered objects other than furniture, or perhaps was commissioned to produce shipping containers for his clients.

George Logan had inherited Stenton by the time he and Deborah Norris Logan were married in 1781. Over the years, a number of objects on the bill have made their way back to Stenton including 5 of the “6 Mahogany Chairs Bases & Brackt. £20” debited on October 6th.

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Tufft’s shop could produce chairs with either cabriole or straight legs with varying degrees of ornamentation based on his customers requests and pocketbook. With minor adjustments, the same pattern was used for the splats of the two chairs in fig. 8. The brackets nailed to the front legs and seat rails are the only curved and carved devices on the lower half of the chair. When placed side by side, it’s easy to see how the brackets on the straight leg chair are reminiscent of the curve at the top of the cabriole leg of the earlier chair - and how necessary they are to the design.

In figure 9, Robert Restalrig Logan (1874-1956), a direct descendent of James Logan, sits on one the 5 surviving chairs with bases and brackets owned by his great-great grandparents, Deborah and George Logan.

I will be posting two short articles this week.

I want to thank Lita Solis-Cohen for her recent article in the Maine Antique Digest in which she introduced readers to this Substack. Lita and I have known one another for a many years. I’m including screen shots of her article as Lita did a better job of summarizing my career than I have on my “About Me” page here.

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So thanks Lita for all your support over the years. And thank you to the subscribers to my Substack and all who have pledged funding.

Next up, a labeled object I believe no subscriber here has seen.

In addition to the maple chest-on-chest base featured in the previous article, there are two walnut chest-on-chests attributed to the Philadelphia cabinetmaker John Head (England 1688 - Philadelphia 1754). That Head did not use the term chest-on-chest in his account book is an impediment to determining dates for these chests. The chest to the left in fig. 1 has loop handles, common from 1715, suggesting the chest is earlier than the chest on the right in fig 1, which has handles attached with threaded bolts that began to replace loop handles by 1730. The chest on the left may be as early as 1723 when Head debited James Lippincot: “To a Chest of Drawers £3 pounds / to another payer apon a frame £5-12-0.”1 Head may be referring to the shaped plinth seen on both chests as a “frame.” In construction, the two chests in fig. 1 are identical. The only difference in design are the four tiers of long drawer in the upper and lower cases of the Wright’s Ferry Mansion chest versus the three short drawers in the top tier of the upper case and two short drawers in the top tier of the lower case of the private collection chest-on-chest. The chest with three additional drawers to construct would be nominally more costly.

Typically, Head charged more for furniture made of mahogany, cherry, and maple than the same forms made in walnut. The maple chest in fig. 2, with the addition of fluted canted corners is the most expensive version of a chest-on-chest from his shop that survives.

Shaped “frames” or pedestals over turned feet were popular for a brief time in London in the 1720s and are rare today. They are even more rare in the American colonies. I know of only four Philadelphia chest-on-chests with shaped pedestals over separate feet - the two chests attributed to Head in figs. 1, the maple chest in fig. 2 and the slightly later Philadelphia chest-on-chest with a shaped pedestal over scroll feet in fig. 3.

Notice that there are three tiers of drawers in the lower case of the chest in fig. 3 rather than the four tiers in the three chests attributed to Head in figs. 1 and 2. Although one can occasionally find four tiers of drawers in the lower case of British chest-on-chests, three is much more common. The feet have round tenons fit to holes bored through a glue block and the bottom board of the case.

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John Head used a similar shaped plinth over turned feet for many of his clock cases. Three feet support the front of the case and extensions of the backboard support the case at the back.

The two chest-on-chests in fig. 5 are identical and likely were made within a year or two of each other. The Winterthur Museum chest is dated on the interior surface of the bottom board of the upper case “1738, 3^rd Mo.” with a timber scribe - or race knife, suggesting a probable date for the chest in a private collection at the left in fig. 5. Both chests have replaced brass. The private collection chest originally had loop handles secured with cotter pins, a fairly late date for this type of attachment.

Like the chest-on-chests attributed to John Head’s shop, the two chests in fig. 5 have four tiers of drawers in their lower cases. The two chests also have the unusual pairing of double-bead drawer surround moulding and fluted canted corners seen in the maple chest-on-chest base. How each shop constructed the corners is different, each devised its own technological solution to a new evolution in design.

In the 1730s chest-on-chests began to adapt architectural characteristics to better relate to their settings. Turned feet were abandoned, fluted pillars were added, and the chests sat on plinths with bracket feet. “Furniture you put things in, is architecture, furniture you put things on, (including yourself) are animals.”2 Chairs, small tables, etc. are constantly in motion in our rooms. Immovables - desk and bookcases and chest-on-chests - become part of the “architecture” of a room.

Notice in the detail of the base moulding and a foot in fig. 6 of the Winterthur 1738 chest, that the foot is placed behind the base moulding, in line with the carcase, rather than flush with the outer filet of the base moulding. The idea of turned foot placement has not been superseded, while at the same time the new design of bracket feet has been embraced. Interestingly, the chest-on-chest in the private collection to the left in fig. 5 also had the feet configured like those in fig 6, but sometime prior to 1966 when the chest entered the private collection, a furniture dealer removed the feet and placed them under the base moulding, unable to accept their uncharacteristic, unconventional placement even if it was the original.

The Quaker City produced nothing like the Boston chest-on-chest in fig. 7. Without knowing that microscopic analysis had identified the primary wood as black walnut and the secondary wood as eastern white pine, from a photograph the chest might easily be attributed to London, England. The technical achievements of woodworking craft and design of the chest display strong connections with the London cabinetmaking trade. It was either produced by an immigrant cabinetmaker or by Boston craftsmen willingly adapting the latest London fashions and techniques. In either case, a wealthy elite clientele was also necessary to commission such objects. The MFA Boston dates the chest to 1715-1725, but that date is too early for the lip moulded drawer fronts and straight bracket feet. There may also be third-phase construction thick rails, but I haven’t examined the chest and difficult to say from the photo. Edward Cooke, Jr in his discussion of the chest “Newest Fashion” Case Furniture in Boston, 1690–1725: A Transatlantic View” suggests a date of circa 1730. This is commensurate with the brassware, and perhaps an earliest possible date of construction, but a more comfortable dating might be more in line with the Philadelphia chests in fig. 5, circa 1735.

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A maple chest on chest base attributed to John Head (1688-1754) first seen in the marketplace in October, 2001 was sold at auction a second time at the end of last year. It has returned to Philadelphia where it was made nearly 300 years ago.

John Head’s account book had been donated to the American Philosophical Society in 1991-1992 as part of the George Vaux Papers but its importance to the history of Philadelphia cabinetmaking was not discovered until 1999.1 Two years later, with Head’s business accounts now accessible and objects from his being shop identified through patrons names and business dealings in his account book, the market for a previously unknown chest that could confidently be attributed to Head’s shop took off and the chest sold at Christie’s, New York for $204,000 even though it was generally thought to be the base of a chest on chest missing its upper case (Fig. 2).

Twenty-four years after it first appeared, it was sold again, this time at Brunk Auctions and for a more reasonable price, $4,000.

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I examined the maple chest at Christie’s in 2001 and made photographs for my file on Head’s work. The proper left side base moulding was off during the preview, exposing the through-dovetailed side-to-bottom joint. (fig.4) The wear on the drawer shown in fig. 5 is great enough to have nearly completely worn away the hard pine side runners allowing us to observe how the bottom board is nailed to the sides before the running strips are glued on. In fig. 4, casters replace a missing half-inch of the feet.

The two images in fig. 6 show that the chest was designed and constructed as the base of a chest on chest.2 The sides are through-dovetailed to the hard pine sub-top. In Head’s single chest of drawers, the sides are lap-dovetailed to a walnut top and a cornice moulding on the front and sides covers the joints. Holes were sawn in the pine sub-top and glue blocks attached the two-board maple top to the chest on chest base. The glue blocks ultimately failed and screws from below the sub-top were added to secure the top boards.3

Head’s system of marking drawer parts for identification during construction are present on the drawer sides and backs. I discuss how the marks were used during construction here:

https://cstorb.com/2018/10/27/theories-of-structurethe-shop-marks-of-john-head/

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All the brassware and iron locks are original. The two short drawers in the top tier have wood spring locks. Evidence of the use of a toothing plane is present on all interior surfaces of the chest. The marks appear on the interior of a drawer front in the photo at the right of fig. 8.

Not only is this the only maple chest the survives from Head’s shop, it is the only chest with fluted, canted (angled) corners attributed to his shop. The chest on chest form was developed in London in the 1720s several years after Head had immigrated.4 But there was no technological advance in producing a chest on chest that Head needed to grasp, you simply constructed a second chest slightly narrower and less deep than the first, add a mid-moulding to visually separate the two and the same cornice moulding used on high chests. Creating a canted corner was something that Head would not have been introduced to during his training, and here Head is improvising. One difficulty is that Head is still making second-phase carcases with thin rails with applied double-arch mouldings. Only one other shop produced second-phase construction chest on chests in this manner with canted corners. With the two walnut chests known from that shop in addition to the Head maple chest, there are only three chest on chests of this design and construction made in Philadelphia that survive.

I’ll continue the story of these rare early eighteenth century Philadelphia chest on chests in a future post.

A large oval table descended through nine generations of the James and Elizabeth (Maris) Bartram family (fig.1). It is only oval table made in Southeastern Pennsylvania with inlaid initials and a date. “B/IE” stands for John (1701-1771) and Elizabeth (Maris) Bartram (1704-1771), the inlaid date “1725” is the year they were married.

The drawers in the oval table in fig. 1 and made in the identical manor to the drawers of Elizabeth Maris’ 1724 dressing table. The bottom is glued to rebates all around creating a flush bottom, There is a miter joint at the tops of the drawer sides and back.

With similar distinctive inlay, matching curly walnut wood - undoubtedly from the same tree as Elizabeth Maris’ dressing table - and specific details of the turning, the 1725 oval table in fig. 1 can confidently be attributed to the shop that produced the dressing table a year earlier.

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A file card in Winterthur Museum, Garden & Library notes a deed of 1726 where James Bartram was listed as a “joiner” when purchasing land in Marple Township. It goes on to say that Bartram was paid for two coffins and that his estate inventory contained joiners’ tools and lumber and mentions unfinished furniture. The source of the deed is a Bartram descendent. The deed is said to be in a private collection. To date I have not seen either the deed or James Bartram’s inventory.1

James Bartram is never mentioned in documents as a joiner aside from the deed referred to in fig. 4. Rather he is described as a yeoman (or farmer) like his brother John. I won’t go into the life story of John and James here but will note that their mother died shortly after James was born, possibly from a complication of his birth. His father remarried, traveled to North Carolina and was killed there in 1711. John and James, now orphaned, were raised by their grandparents on their farm.

In her book Furniture and Its Makers of Chester County, Schiffer Publishing LTD, 1978, in which she published the 1725 oval table (fig. 2), Margaret Berwind Schiffer did not attribute the the table to James Bartram though she knew the table was owned by Bartram descendants and the initials stood for James and Elizabeth Bartram. She also did not include James Bartram in her list of “Alphabetical Craftsmen” in the first half of her book.

The oval table in fig. 1 was first described as “possibly made by James Bartram, Chester County, c. 1725-40” in the catalogue of the 1999 exhibition “Worldly Goods” at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.2 Interestingly, the dressing table was also in the exhibition but the author did not associate the two pieces except to attribute the dressing table to “Southeastern Pennsylvania, possibly Chester County.” Since then, the dressing table and oval table together have been described as “possibly by James Bartram” and that with James, described as a “joiner” in the deed referred to in fig. 4, “(he) would have to be considered a candidate for the maker.” 3

However, there is no discussion in these publications in which James is being considered a possible maker about how these objects are constructed, the quality of the materials, the extraordinary workmanship, or the highly mature and inventive quality of the turning.

If James Bartram made the dressing table and oval table he would had to have done so when he was 23 to 24 years old. Woodworking prodigies are, of course, possible but to consider the possibility of attributing these two objects to James Bartram, begs the question who did he apprentice with? What other objects in the field were made by his master before or during the years he would have been an apprentice, roughly 1715-1722? Is he working in his master’s style or had he developed into the one of, if not the, most creative and accomplished joiners in Southeastern Pennsylvania by the time he was 23? It is difficult for me to see how this could have happened even knowing the little we do about his early life. There has never been a suggestion that he apprenticed with a local joiner.

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There is not enough evidence for me to attribute James and Elizabeth Bartram’s furniture to James himself. It is a romantic idea that James, at a very young age, made the most elaborate - hence the most expensive - and most sophisticated dressing table from the first quarter of the eighteenth century in the Philadelphia area for his future wife. But these objects appear more like the work of an immigrant English joiner with a greater notion of English woodworking traditions than James Bartram could have had growing up working on his grandparents farm before purchasing his own farm of 240 acres, 10 miles west of Philadelphia along Darby Creek in Marple Township, Delaware County in 1726.4

The joinery techniques and turned elements of the chest in fig. 8 are closely related to the Bartram family furniture and I attribute all three objects to the same shop. It is one of several objects from this shop that could have been made earlier than the Bartram family pieces.

As you can see from the article in fig. 9, the Bartram family table left the family just over 20 years ago. It is now a promised gift the Winterthur Museum, Garden & Library. I look forward to studying it there, as I’ve only examined it during the brief time it was at the auction preview.

It is interesting that Elizabeth Maris Bartram’s parents were acknowledged in the Antique Week article shown in fig. 9. Elizabeth Hayes (1677-1720) was born in Cheshire, and immigrated to Pennsylvania with her family in 1683. In 1698 she married Richard Maris (1672-1745), also an English immigrant. Elizabeth Hayes Maris’ grandfather, Jonathan Hayes (1644 England-1715 Pennsylvania), was the largest landowner in Marple township. If I were to “follow the money,” I would start with Elizabeth Maris Bartram’s ancestors. Elizabeth’s mother died four years before she was married, her paternal grandmother died two years before she was married. Accumulated family wealth could have allowed the purchase of these striking objects whose inlay allows us to place them in a context in a way we are rarely able to do in the study of historic furniture.

When attributions are made without cogent, knowledge based arguments it tends to discontinue further research and discoveries that may be within reach. I’d be happy to discover James Bartram really did make these objects but until that happens, I’m still looking.

One of the extraordinary achievements in Delaware River Valley furniture making is a dressing table made for Elizabeth Maris (1704-1771) dated 1724, the year before her marriage to James Bartram (1701-1771). James was the younger brother of botanist John Bartram (1769-1777) who had married Elizabeth’s sister Mary (1703-1727) in 1723. Fig.1 shows front and rear three-quarters views of the table. A note in the Philadelphia Museum of Art object file for the table records that the double-ogee cut on the backboard had been questioned over the years. It is original, and skillfully done. Kerf left from the bow saw that made the cuts are present, no correction with rasps of gouges was necessary. It would also be extremely difficult to shape the backboard with a bow saw after the table was assembled. The ogee cut eliminates the backboard being excessively visible from front and three-quarter views of the table. It’s a nice touch, in accordance with the care and thoughtfulness with which the table was crafted.

The elaborately inlaid top of Elizabeth’s dressing table includes the date “1724” above the broad light-wood oval inlay, and her maiden initials “EM” under the oval. The inlaid vase in the oval is a restoration from the 1970s.

The initials “EM” are made of maple stringing inlaid in an end-grain piece of walnut inlaid in the top. It is inconclusive what the end-grain walnut shape is meant to represent.

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In her will, Elizabeth Maris Bartram left her “dressing Table” to her youngest granddaughter, Sarah Howell. The table remained in the family until 1927 when it sold at auction from the estate of Hannah P. Lawrence, a descendent of James and Elizabeth Bartram. (Fig. 4, at left.) The antique dealer Thomas Curran purchased the table and quickly had the restored stretchers replaced with a more appropriate design.1 The table was illustrated the next year in Wallace Nutting’s Furniture Treasury. (Fig. 4, at right.) Since that time it had been assumed by many that the table when illustrated in Furniture Treasury was in unrestored condition. While surveying Samuel T. Freeman’s auction catalogues from the first half of the twentieth century I came across the illustration of the table before Curran purchased it and had the stretchers remade. Unfortunately, Curran added a spurious center finial and fifth foot, still present. No Philadelphia turned leg dressing table was ever made with a foot at the center of the stretchers.

William Macpherson Hornor was the next to illustrate the Bartram family table in a 1931 article. (See fig. 5, pen inscription at bottom. Where it was published is indecipherable.) The article was dutifully cut out and pasted in the middle drawer, either by Curran or the collector to whom he sold it, R. Wistar Harvey. Hornor called the table “the finest lowboy emanating from Philadelphia in the first quarter of the eighteenth century, or probably from anywhere in the Colonies at that time.” Nearly a hundred years later, nothing has surfaced to dispute that.

In addition, Hornor illustrated the dressing table in his opus Philadelphia Furniture, 1935, pl. 19, when it was owned by R. Wistar Harvey (1868-1939).

The care taken with the materials and technicalities of workmanship of the dressing table is exceptional and noteworthy. The sides, front, and top of the table are unusually figured curly walnut boards. The yellow poplar sides and backs and the Atlantic white cedar bottoms of the drawers are quarter-sawn from old-growth trees having no imperfections. The drawers are constructed in a sophisticated manner rarely seen on full size drawers made in eighteenth century Philadelphia. Instead of first or second-phase construction, with bottoms glued and nailed to the sides and back, the bottom is glued to rebates all around creating a flush bottom. (See fig7.) At the back, the tops of the drawers are mitered. More often seen at the bottom of the back of drawers in London work, the same effect is achieved, avoiding exposed end grain.

A future article will continue the discussion of features and characteristics of the shop that produced the dressing table in fig.1. I’ll point to other objects produced in the shop and address the attribution of the dressing table to James Bartram himself that has been put forward in furniture exhibition catalogues and journals over the past 25 years.

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