The 1772 Philadelphia furniture price book rediscovered

Magazine Antiques, May, 2005 by Alexandra Alevizatos Kirtley

The printed version of the 1772 Philadelphia Pricea of Cabinet and Chair Work, the size of a postcard, is a once in a lifetime find. Its paperboard ends covered with marbleized paper (see Pl. Ia) enclose thirty-six well-worn pages of laid rag paper. The pages are printed with the names of categories of furniture one could have made to order by craftsmen in Philadelphia in 1772. Each entry is followed by three columns of prices (see Pls. I c-f). From the left, these give the retail price of the object made of mahogany, the price if made of walnut, and the amount the cabinetmaker would have to pay a journeyman to make the object. The furniture detailed in the small book is considered by connoisseurs to be the highest expression of baroque form and rococo ornament.

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The long-lost printed version of the 1772 Prices of Cabinet and Chair Work was discovered in the summer of 2003 by a southeastern Pennsylvania couple, Thomas and Delores Howland, in a box of books they had inherited from a family friend in the 1960s. The Howlands became fascinated by the cryptic shorthand contained in this, the smallest book in the box, and on the advice of a friend they sought the assistance of Lita Solis-Cohen, a noted journalist in the field of American decorative arts, who, along with Alan Miller, a furniture consultant and craftsman, explained to the couple what it was that they had. Solis-Cohen contacted me at the Philadelphia Museum of Art in late July 2003. (1) Several curators examined the book, and the Howlands became convinced that it would be best preserved as a work of art and object for study among examples of the treasures it explicates at the museum. So in November 2003 the Howlands announced that they would give the book to the museum.

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To grasp the magnitude of this discovery requires a brief explanation of the history and use of furniture price books in eighteenth-century America. The only American furniture price list, printed or manuscript, that predates this Philadelphia book of prices is a 1756 manuscript created by the master furniture makers of Providence, Rhode Island, entitled "Particular Price of Joinery Work." It lists thirty-five pieces of furniture and their retail prices along with an addendum adjusting the prices for 1757. At the end of the manuscript page, the cabinetmakers agreed to prices for "Journeymen's Work for making." (2)

The existence of a printed version of Philadelphia's book of prices was recognized early in the twentieth century through a manuscript copy that surfaced at the Historical Society of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. It is dated 1786 and is commonly referred to as the Lehman version for Benjamin Lehman (1760-1839), a carpenter and lumberyard owner, who signed his name on it and possibly owned a printed copy and transcribed it. (3) The manuscript is essential to the understanding of the printed price book because it identifies the meaning of the three columns of prices.

Based on the Lehman manuscript, the date 1786 became the foundation for dating the preference for certain furniture styles and for dating the manufacture of individual pieces of furniture. William Macpherson Hornor Jr. (1897-1969), for example, used the Lehman manuscript to date the furniture he uncovered in the houses of the great Philadelphia families and illustrated in his Blue Book, Philadelphia Furniture (1935).

In the late 1970s, another manuscript copy of the Philadelphia book of prices was discovered--this time with a transcription of the title page of the printed book, phonetically spelled: "Philadelphia/Printed by James Hum[phries] at the loer Corner of Black hors Aley MDCCLXXII." (4) The 1772 date revised the dates for late baroque style furniture by a decade and a half and corrected the perception that Americans continued to embrace the baroque style well after the Revolution without ceding to the neoclassical style. The style of furniture described reflects the taste for the late baroque in 1772, although some of the forms already anticipate the neoclassical style.

For the first time it was understood that an enterprising group of craftsmen had commissioned a printer to publish their retail prices and journeymen's wages at the early date of 1772. This is sixteen years before London's first known printed price list. (5)

Both manuscript versions of the Philadelphia price guide contain entries for forty-two different types of furniture and both end on page twenty-eight, at the entry on beds. The printed version now in the Philadelphia Museum of Art continues with entries for fourteen additional forms, including china trays, cupboards, cornices, window blinds, and picture frames, and ends, appropriately, with coffins. It also contains notations on the front and back covers suggesting that its original owner was the cabinetmaker Joseph Delavau (w. before 1774-1805) who made notes in this book concerning a fire screen, possibly a commission from John (1742-1786) and Elizabeth Lloyd Cadwalader (1742-1776) for their lavishly appointed house on Second Street in Philadelphia. (6)