Museum accessions

Magazine Antiques, May, 2005 by Eleanor H. Gustafson

When the director and chief executive officer at the Winterthur Museum in Winterthur, Delaware says, "this is without question the most important acquisition Winterthur has purchased since the death of ... Henry Francis du Pont," it must be something. And so it is. Thanks to the generosity of a number of donors, the museum has acquired a majestic tall clock with works by one of the best makers in colonial America, Peter Stretch of Philadelphia. The monumental case itself displays the hand of an as-yet unidentified master craftsman, who selected the finest figured mahogany and developed a very sophisticated design, incorporating a highly architectural arched hood possibly derived from British architectural design books of the period, along with elaborate carving and pierced fretwork. In the center of the pierced fretwork above the face is a coat of arms that appears to be that of the Plumsted family, which was quite prominent in early Philadelphia. The clock could have been made for either Clement Plumsted (1680-1745), a Quaker, or, more likely, judging by its presumed date and other circumstantial evidence, for his son William (1708-1765), both wealthy merchants who also both served multiple terms as mayor of Philadelphia.

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They would most certainly have known the equally civic-minded Stretch, who served on Philadelphia's common council from 1708 until his death in 1746. Also a Quaker, Stretch arrived in Philadelphia from Staffordshire, England, in 1703, and became the city's leading clockmaker. The precision of the face and works of this eight-day clock testify to his extraordinary abilities. The mechanism provides seven pieces of information essential for any busy merchant: the day of the month, the hour, minute, and second, the tide, the phase of the moon, and the day of the moon phase.

Virtually contemporaneous with the tall clock but expressing a far more conservative aesthetic is the slant-front desk illustrated above, acquired by Strawbery Banke Museum in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. It is believed to have been made in nearby York, Maine, and is constructed primarily of black walnut using wooden peg fastenings. The interior, which features a lighter wood--probably maple--is the most ambitious element of the desk, with stepped drawers, shaped pigeonhole valances, and a secret compartment. The brasses are original. Besides its early date, the desk is notable for the fact that it is branded "O.BRIARD" several times on the backboard, for Oliver Briard, a later owner who was a dry-goods merchant on Market Street in Portsmouth from the early nineteenth century until the mid-1830s. He was a long-time member and secretary of the Humane Fire Society and fire warden in 1817, which may explain the brands. Fire societies often required their members to brand their furniture so that it could be identified if it had to be removed during a fire.

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When John Hancock's house on Beacon Hill in Boston was threatened with demolition in the 1860s, early preservationists there clambered to save it. In 1863 Thomas Oliver Hazard Perry Burnham, a publisher and antiquarian book dealer, issued a large broadside printed in bright red ink that was distributed throughout Boston urging Bostonians to "Save the Old John Hancock Mansion," but to no avail; the house was razed in 1863. As a memento, someone, possibly Burnham, had the large armchair illustrated at right made from oak timbers and wooden pegs from the house. Some years later, when it looked like Boston's Old South Meeting House might meet the same fate as the Hancock house, Burnham donated the chair to a raffle to raise funds to save it. Twenty-two-year-old Edward Silas Tobey Jr., about whom little else is known, won the chair. He left it to his sister, with the stipulation that she leave it to the Massachusetts Historical Society in Boston, which she did in 1954. The historical society recently donated it to Historic New England, also in Boston, capping the latter's collection of material related to the Hancock house, including architectural fragments, furnishings, photographs, and other ephemera.

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The small elegant tea table illustrated above belongs to a group of furniture that has been ascribed to as-yet unidentified Irish cabinetmakers working in the Rappahannock River basin in Virginia in the mid-eighteenth century. The sharply pointed feet, cabriole legs, and the exuberantly shaped skirt are similar to those on tables and other furniture made in Ireland, but the use of North American black walnut and the table's Virginia history confirm that it was made here. Two distinct Irish cabinetmaking shop traditions have been identified in furniture from the region, but to date no specific names have been linked to either. The artisan who made the table illustrated also made a fragmentary high chest in Colonial Williamsburg's collection and a dressing table in the Museum of Early Southern Decorative Arts in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.