Early American tables and other furniture at Stenton

Magazine Antiques, May, 2004 by Philip D. Zimmerman

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I gratefully acknowledge the assistance of Stephen G. Hague and Laura Keim Stutman of Stenton in the preparation of this article.

(1) Philip D. Zimmerman, "Eighteenth-century Philadelphia case furniture at Stenton," and "Eighteenth-century chairs at Stenton," The Magazine ANTIQUES, vol. 161, no. 5 (May 2002), pp. 94-101, and vol. 163, no. 5 (May 2003), pp. 122-129, respectively.

(2) Citations to James Logan's purchases are from Raymond Voight Shepherd Jr., "James Logan's Stenton: Grand Simplicity in Quaker Philadelphia" (master's thesis, University of Delaware, Newark, 1968), p. 188.

(3) James Logan's inventory dated August 1752, is transcribed in ibid., pp. 196-198.

(4) Stapleford is known to have been a maker of cane chairs who moved from Boston in the mid-1690s. See Benno M. Forman, American Seating Furniture, 1630-1730: An Interpretive Catalogue (W. W. Norton, New York, 1988), pp. 274-275.

(5) For instructive comparisons with the account book of the Philadelphia furniture maker John Head, see Jay Robert Stiefel, "Philadelphia Cabinetmaking and Commerce, 1718-1753: The Account Book of John Head, Joiner." American Philosophical Society Bulletin. vol. 1, no. 1 (Winter 2001), X, E, 4 "To an oval Table" (http://www.amphilsoc.org/library/bulletin/20011/head.htm). The table in Pl. I is illustrated and identified as possibly the work of Joseph Claypoole in Andrew Brunk, "The Claypoole Family Joiners of Philadelphia: Their Legacy and the Context of Their Work," in American Furniture 2002, ed. Luke Beckerdite (2002), p. 151, Fig. 5.

(6) Head's account book includes a cash payment of eighteen shillings on May 15, 1724, from James Logan for "a Walnut Table," ordered on October 30, 1723. This transaction is not mentioned in surviving Logan records. The table is probably not the table in Pl. I because the value is too low and the description does not note the oval shape. See Stiefel, "Philadelphia Cabinetmaking and Commerce," section entitled "The Head Account Book as Artifact: A Supplementary Essay," I, A, I "Payment."

(7) For other Philadelphia examples, see Jack L. Lindsey, Worldly Goods: The Arts of Early Pennsylvania, 1680-1758 (Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, 1999), p. 153, Nos. 77-80. For a large gateleg table made in 1725 by John Owen (d. 1752) of Chester, see Margaret Berwind Schiffer, Fumiture and Its Makers of Chester County, Pennsylvania (University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia, 1966), pp. 190-191, Fig. 85.

(8) This tea table is illustrated along with a 1744 diary entry of William Black's experience taking tea at Stenton in Laura Keim Stutman, "Furnishing Stenton: Quaker Grandeur in Philadelphia," in Philadelphia Antiques Show 2002 catalogue, p. 62.

(9) See, for example, the tea table in Clement E. Conger and Mary K. Itsell. Treasures of State: Fine and Decorative Arts in the Diplomatic Reception Rooms of the U.S. Department of State (Harry N. Abrams, New York, 1991), No. 68.

(10) See, for example, Philip D. Zimmerman and Jennifer Faulds Goldsborough, The Sewell C. Biggs Museum of American Art: A Catalogue (Biggs Museum of American Art, Dover, Delaware, 2002), vol. 1, p. 46, No. 29.