The modern gothic furniture of Pottier and Stymus

Magazine Antiques, May, 1999 by Kristin S. Herron

The New York City firm of Pottier and Stymus was one of the premier cabinetmaking firms of the late nineteenth century in the United States. In 1875 alone it made more than $1.1 million and had 750 employees.(1) The firm produced interiors for private and commercial clients both here and abroad, but since only a few objects are clearly marked, identifying its furniture is difficult.(2) Pottier and Stymus made furniture in the neo-grec, Renaissance revival, and Egyptian revival styles. Period publications also indicate that they produced furniture in the modern Gothic style, yet curiously no examples were known until recently.

New research has revealed modern Gothic furniture among the furnishing provided by Pottier and Stymus between 1882 and 1884 for the Glenmont estate in Llewellyn Park, West Orange, New Jersey.(3) This furniture provides new ways to identify and document the work of Pottier and Stymus.

Glenmont [ILLUSTRATION FOR PLATE I OMITTED] is preserved today by the National Park Service as part of the Edison National Historic Site, because it served as the primary residence of the inventor Thomas Alva Edison (1847-1931) for forty-five years. The house was designed in 1880 by Henry Hudson Holly for Henry C. Pedder, an administrator at Arnold Constable and Company, a New York City department store. It was probably Holly who recommended that Pedder hire Pottier and Stymus, whom he said were "doing some beautiful work."(4) Glenmont was completed in 1881 and Pottier and Stymus's interiors were finished in February 1884. However, shortly thereafter the New York Times exposed Pedder for embezzling hundreds of thousands of dollars from his employer. Pedder's illegally funded estate was turned over to Arnold Constable and Pedder fled the country.(5)

In 1885 Edison was a thirty-eight-year-old widower with three children who was about to marry for the second time. He sought an appropriate residence for his bride to be, Mina Miller, who had been raised on a large estate in Akron, Ohio. Although richer than he had ever been, Edison did not intend to spend more than $20,000 on a new house, but when he was shown Glenmont on more than thirteen acres of landscaped grounds and for sale at a much larger price he wrote:

When I entered this I was paralyzed. To think that it was possible to buy a place like this, which a man with taste for art and a talent for decoration had put...years of enthusiastic study and effort into - too enthusiastic, in fact - the idea fairly turned my head and I snapped it up. It is a great deal too nice for me, but it isn't half nice enough for my little wife here.(6)

The estate was valued at $271,000, including the Pottier and Stymus furnishings that had cost Pedder just over $36,000, but Edison paid less than half the value for the fully furnished Queen Anne style house, grounds, and outbuildings.(7)

Auguste Pottier (1823-1896) was born in Coulommiers, in north central France, and was apprenticed to a wood sculptor in Paris. He had immigrated to the United States by 1847, first working for E. W. Hutchings and Son, then, in 1851, forming a short-lived partnership with Gustave Herter (1830-1898) as Herter, Pottier and Company. In 1856 he became general foreman at Rochefort and Skarren, cabinetmakers in New York City, where he probably met William P. Stymus, who was the upholstery foreman. After Rochefort's death in 1859, Pottier and Stymus formed a partnership and took over the firm. Their new venture began on May 1 of that year with a workshop at 115 Wooster Street and their salesroom at 623 Broadway.(8)

Two significant events occurred in 1888. In February, Pottier and Stymus Manufacturing Company liquidated and was succeeded by Pottier and Stymus Company, a cooperative. The president was Adrian Pottier, Auguste's nephew; the vice president was Auguste Pottier; and the treasurer was Frank Pentz. William P. Stymus Sr. and Jr. and seven other men employed by the previous firm were also named as members of the firm.(9)

The second event was a fire that ravaged the factory on Lexington Avenue in the early hours of March 1. The next day the Daily Graphic provided a detailed drawing of the disaster and announced that "a pile of rains now covers the ground where the great buildings stood." Although the factory was rebuilt on the same location, most of the firm's meticulous records are believed to have been destroyed in the fire.

The firm's elaborate and elegant work in the various revival styles noted above is known from such commissions as the president's office and the Cabinet Room in the White House in 1869(10) and the house of the financier and politician Leland Stanford (1824-1893) in Palo Alto, California, in 1875.(11)

The only evidence to suggest that the firm also produced simpler, modern Gothic designs are three drawings published in Harper's New Monthly Magazine in November 1876 [ILLUSTRATION FOR PLATES IX, X OMITTED].(12) The furniture shown reflects the tenets of the English design reform movement - geometric and incised lines, contrasting materials, and architectonic qualities. The crenellations, rectilinearity, and compartmentalization on the top of the sideboard in Plate IX are repeated in the design of chests of drawers and headboards on bedsteads in Glenmont [ILLUSTRATION FOR PLATE III OMITTED]. Indeed, the shape of the sideboard nearly matches that of an organ case in the reception room at Glenmont [ILLUSTRATION FOR PLATE VII OMITTED]. Notably different are the metal hinges on the furniture in Plates IX and X and the floral marquetry panels on the Glenmont furniture.