1910s AD

Magazine Antiques, May, 2003 by Thomas Andrew Denenberg, Trina Evarts Bowman

Nutting introduced mahogany furniture around 1926, recalled Franklin H. Gottshall (1902-1992), an employee in Nutting's Framinghaxn factory, who went on to an important career as an author of woodworking books. (19) The first piece reproduced in mahogany, according to Gottshall, was a monumental chest-on-chest in the style of John Townsend (1732-1809). Nutting publicly announced the new line in an advertisement in this magazine in September 1927, where he offered an upholstered easy chair; followed in April 1928 with a simple Chippendale style chair; and in July 1928 with a block-front chest of drawers. (20) By the time the supreme edition of the General Catalog (1930) was ready Nutting's offerings included more than three hundred pieces of furniture, as well as wrought iron and treenware.

Nutting patterned these reproductions not only on furniture in his own collection but also on objects in the newly organized American collections at major museums. In 1920 he had access to the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford and received permission to photograph certain objects for reproduction. (21) Four years later his relationship with the museum deepened when he sold his collection to John Pierpont Morgan Jr. (1867-1943) who gave it to the museum (see Fig. 4). This made Nutting's vision of Old America an institutionalized reality, lending gravitas to his sale of reproductions. Installed in a series of alcove rooms much like the period rooms of the present American Wing of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, the Wallace Nutting Collection provided proof of "the sturdy character of our ancestors;' according to the antiquarian Henry Wood Erving (1851-1941) writing in the Hartford Daily Courant. (22) "The general homey appearance of the room[s] will appeal to nearly everyone, he wrote, and, pickin g the minister's rhetoric, he proclaimed that the objects were made by a kingly kind, conscious of personal power yet kneeling to God." (23)

As expected, Nutting made much hay of his association with the museum. in 1930 he boasted of the "source of my copies" in the supreme edition of the General Catalog:

1. The Wallace Nutting Collection at Hartford, 2. The former collection, with much mahogany, 3. The collections of the Metropolitan Museum, of which I have the honor of being a member, 4. The collections of many friends who have been kind enough to give me access for measurements. (24)

Self-conscious about the distinction between his roles as an antiquarian and a manufacturer, Nutting held, and offered, strong opinions about an appropriate finish for his furniture. Although he was frequently asked to "antique," or add a false patina, to his wares, he steadfastly refused. Nutting furniture was sold with either a painted ebony-colored topcoat or a carefully built-up shellac surface. (25) He was proud to offer Old American forms gleaming as new.

For all his interest in redeeming antique furniture for the modem era, Nutting was equally fond of repeating the story of one of his reproduction windsor chairs. "A child's high chair made by us and sold for nineteen dollars, was artificially aged and resold for a cool thousand. Nobody but the maker could have discovered the imposition," he recalled. (26) Others were less amused. Appleton wrote to him: "Let me urge you very strongly to mark every piece that leaves your shop--whether iron work or furniture, or anything else--in such a way that it can never be confounded with the old." (27) In the early days of the business. Nutting had employed an "old tyme" paper label on the bottom of his furniture, often with the model number stamped with punches. Perhaps as a result of Appleton's hectoring, Nutting began to brand his furniture in the early 1920s, first with a script logo and then with a bold block brand.