The painted furniture of Maine

Magazine Antiques, May, 2000 by Edwin A. Churchill, Thomas B. Johnson

Such inventory references underscore the general relationship between formal and painted furniture in middle- and upper-class Maine households. The best room--used for formal entertaining and where one showed off one's prized possessions-generally contained furniture of mahogany and stained hardwoods, sometimes mixed with painted chairs and minor painted pieces such as fireboards, bellows, or footstools. Major pieces of painted furniture most often appear in the more private rooms of a house, such as a back parlor or the primary bedrooms (see P1. XIV). [14] Reserved for family and close friends, these were rooms for relaxation and unguarded behavior Painted furniture, which added color and style without ostentation, was probably perceived as more comfortable to live with than the finer pieces in the formal parlor.

The major exception to this general rule was the painted chair, which apparently bridged the gap between formal and informal furniture in middle- and upperclass households. Inventories, such as those of Foxwell Cutts and Daniel Holmes noted above, repeatedly reveal that the fanciest and most public rooms of Maine houses often contained green chairs, black chairs, yellow chairs, and other painted or fancy chairs (see P1. XI). [15] For example, Silas Payson's stylish house in Alna contained ten olive-colored dining chairs, a large birch dining table, mahogany card tables, a mahogany eight-day clock, and a mahogany desk. [16]

Even in middle- and upper-class houses, workrooms such as kitchens were largely devoid of decorated furniture, containing what inventories listed simply as "kitchen" chairs and tables, often of pine. Invariably, their value was a fraction of that of other furniture in the house, with some kitchen chairs valued as low as 16[cent]; [17] painted chairs generally ran from about 85[cent] to $1.50. An interesting exception to this general observation is found in the inventory of Lieutenant John Perley (1779-1841), who had a painted pine tall clock in the kitchen of his mansion in the inland town of Bridgton. [18]

Further down the economic scale, painted furniture may have represented the best one could afford. The Woolwich yeoman John McKenney had three black and green Windsor chairs and "one red pine table" in his parlor. [19] However, the inventories of the poorest Maine residents rarely include any painted furniture, a lack that is substantiated by the scarcity of surviving decorated pieces from Downeast.

Obviously, those supplying decorated furniture had to respond to a variety of needs and desires regarding quality, cost, and style. Surviving account books and inventories reveal that many furniture makers created wares across the economic spectrum. [20] According to the 1822 inventory of the Augusta cabinetmaker Jonathan Bond, he used pine, birch, beech, basswood, bird's-eye maple, mahogany, and ebony, and made mahogany or birch tables and bureaus as well as painted trunks and cradles. His supplies included "1 paint stone," "knife and muller," "1 box and drawers of paints," and "1 painted cupboard and its contents (oil jugs, paint, & c)." [21]