Museum accessions - George Mason's Gunston Hall, Virginia - Brief Article

Magazine Antiques, May, 2002 by Eleanor H. Gustafson

A bout 1755 the Virginia statesman George Mason began building Gunston Hall, the fine brick house in Fairfax County that became his primary residence for the rest of his life and which has long been open to the public. Recently the museum staff studied all known information about Mason's household belongings and established a plan to acquire appropriate objects that were owned by him or reflect those he probably owned. One of the most important objects the museum sought was a desk-and-bookcase, for every single one of the hundreds of inventories of elite Chesapeake Bay region households the staff had studied included at least one, and Mason himself mentioned that he owned one in a letter dated June 1, 1787. Gunston Hall was most fortunate to acquire the example shown here, attributed to John Selden, who was apprenticed to John Brown, a cabinetmaker in Norfolk, Virginia, in 1756, and who then worked variously in Norfolk, Hampton, and Bland-ford, Virginia In its workmanship and style, the desk-and bookcase exem plifies the neat and plain style most often preferred by well-to-do householders in the Chesapeake Bay region such as Mason.

Three of the articles in this issue (pp. 102-111, 140-149, and 150-157) are dedicated to Catherine Hoover Voorsanger, former associate curator of American decorative arts at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, who died late last year. As these dedications imply her influence on American nineteenth-century decorative arts scholarship was profound, a fact further acknowledged by two recent donations to the Metropolitan Museum's American Wing in her honor. One is the pier table labeled by Joseph Meeks and Sons of New York City that is illustrated on page 110, Plate XII. The other is the unusual fall-front secretary illustrated here, at the lower right. Roughly contemporary with the pier table, it was also made in New York City, although by whom has not been determined. This type of secretaire a abattant originated in France in the late eighteenth century and became immensely popular in New York in the early nineteenth century. Unlike most New York examples, however, this one recalls contemporary Ge rman or Austrian models more than the French prototypes. In its exuberant veneers and boldly sculptural quality, it is unequaled.

The armchair illustrated here is another interesting and important piece recently donated to the American Wing. It was originally part of a suite of two sofas and sixteen chairs once in the New York City mansion of James Beekman Jr. and long on loan to the New-York Historical Society, but its precise origin had confounded experts for some time. Happily the industrious digging of Elizabeth Bidwell Bates, an avid researcher and cultural historian in New York City unearthed documentation of the furniture's early years. One set of a sofa and eight armchairs, including this one, was ordered by Beckman 1819 from John Banks upholstered by William Denny using European tapestries Beekman had acquired in 1818; a matching set was made by Banks m 1830 but whether Denny upholstered them is not known, since he is not listed in New York City directories at that time.

The documentation of the furniture provoked renewed study of the pieces themselves, and a number of interesting discoveries were made, including the fact that some of the pieces utilize structural dowels, which are generally considered rare in furniture made before the middle of the nineteenth century. Different construction methods amongst the pieces underscores the fact that working methods within a workshop can be very inconsistent, even on a single set of furniture. Debate continues as to whether the present upholstery is the original, but the amount of new information offered by this furniture is remarkable.