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Living with antiques: an Americana collection in New Jersey

Magazine Antiques, April, 2005 by Remi Spriggs

Forty years ago this summer, a married couple began the long but satisfying journey of restoring and furnishing a nineteenth-century New Jersey farmhouse. Both drew much of their inspiration from childhood: his mother collected folk art; her mother collected American decorative arts. The couple inherited their love of antiques, and together they have amassed an eclectic collection of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Americana, including many objects with New Jersey lineages. They carefully research each object, investigating the lives and careers of the artisans, artists, sitters, and former owners, thereby revealing each object's complex history, much of which enriches the present article.

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The eleven-room vernacular farmhouse (Pl. II), which is both comfortable and inviting, provides an ideal and historical setting for the collection. The original simple one-and-a-half-story house dates from the early nineteenth century and consists of a dining room and kitchen with bedrooms above. In 1844 a member of the Morford family bought the house and the surrounding 110 acres, and about six years later a Greek revival addition was added to the west side of the house, now comprising the entrance hall and living room on the first floor, and a hallway, guest bedroom, principal bedroom, and study on the second floor. The couple has taken the greatest care to preserve the character of the farmhouse, which retains the original wide yellow pine floorboards, doors, and moldings.

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The front door opens onto the entrance hall (Pl. VI), which runs the depth of the house. Particularly in this hall, but throughout the house as well, the couple has assembled examples of furniture and objects indigenous to New Jersey. The cherry dressing table was made about 1750 in Monmouth County, New Jersey. (1) The tureen on stand and pair of candlesticks on the table are of blue-and-white Chinese porcelain and were made in the nineteenth century for export. The collectors inherited some 150 pieces of this ware and have added a dozen more to make an intact service for fourteen. An eighteenth-century New England reticule, embroidered with a large red heart, lies on the dressing table next to the porcelain. Above hangs a mahogany veneered looking glass, 1760-1770, of either American or English origin, which descended for nearly two hundred years in a family from Freehold in Monmouth County. Flanking the looking glass is a pair of pastel portraits of Harriet Rugg Spaulding (1815-1897) and Anson Spaulding (1812-1866) of Worcester County, Massachusetts, painted by Ruth Henshaw Bascom (1772-1848) twenty-six days after their marriage in 1834. Bascom created the portraits by casting a shadow of the sitters on paper, tracing the silhouette with graphite, and then coloring it with pastels. Her life and career as a portrait painter is well documented, thanks to the survival of a journal she kept from 1789 through 1846, in which she recorded some one thousand portraits she painted. (2) On either side of the dressing table are mahogany side chairs, 1730-1760, with platform slipper feet attributed to New Jersey. The couple covered the seats with mid-eighteenth-century English wool moreen. The mid-eighteenth-century side chair at the far end of the hall, covered with the same moreen, has a long history of ownership in New Jersey, and was possibly made in the Delaware River valley. Above the chair is a pastel portrait by an unknown artist of Lovina Hawks (1781-1828) of Shelburne, Massachusetts.

In the living room (Pl. VIII), off the entrance hall, the simple marble fireplace surround is original to the addition of 1850. On the mantel are a bulb tray and a pair of candlesticks from the blue-and-white porcelain service, and above it hangs an American gilded looking glass of about 1820. In the fireplace are a pair of brass andirons and a fender, American or English, dating from the early nineteenth century. A recent addition to the collection is the walnut or mahogany tilt-top candlestand at the left, which dates from the early nineteenth century and is attributed to New Jersey. Underneath the top Helen A. Schuyler signed her name with an orange crayon. This is possibly the Helen A. Schuyler (1869-1954) from East Windsor Township, New Jersey, whose great-grandfather Aaron Schuyler (c. 1780-1847) was a woodworker and turner in East Windsor. His inventory lists a stand, possibly the one pictured here, and a variety of woodworking tools. (3) A Chippendale upholstered chair, 1760-1780, either American or English, stands next to the table. The mahogany roundabout chair, 1750-1800, at the right is attributed to Litchfield County, Connecticut. The Dutch six-armed brass chandelier dates from the early nineteenth century. The carpet is a nineteenth-century Sarouk.