Gillows of Lancaster and London as a design source for American chairs

Magazine Antiques, June, 1999 by Susan Stuart

23 The information about Washington's chair was provided in a letter from Mount Vernon to the Winterthur Museum, on April 15, 1964. A bill dated August 28, 1793 (or possibly 1798), from Robert Carter of New York City documents that he provided a Mr. Elmendorf with the set of chairs of this design that is now at Colonial Williamsburg, Glen Sanders Collection. See ANTIQUES, March 1986, p. 633, for chairs made before 1794 for Samuel Shaw of Boston.

24 The pattern was not limited to manufacture in Salem. A chair believed to have been made in Alexandria, Virginia, is illustrated and discussed in Ronald L. Hurst and Jonathan Prown, Southern Furniture 1680-1830: The Colonial Williamsburg Collection (Colonial Williamsburg Foundation with Harry N. Abrams, New York, 1997), pp. 129-131, No. 33.

25 Gillows Petty Ledger, 1780-1782, entry for March 23, 1780 (GA 344/73, reel 36).

26 Ibid., entry for June 1, 1782. For an illustration, see Gillow Furniture Designs 1760-1800, ed. Lindsay Boynton (Bloomsfield Press, Royston, Hertfordshire, 1995), Fig. 275 and p. 176.

27 The firm is recorded in Baltimore city directories during these years.

28 This style may be the one referred to as "drapery back" in an entry of December 15, 1781, in the Gillows Petty Ledger, 1780-1782, p. 82 (GA 344/73, reel 36). Other terms for it were "Drapery and feather" or "feather back" (Boynton, Gillow Furniture Designs, Fig. 273 and p. 176).

29 Hundreds of chairs with this back were made in New York City. An example that descended in the Ball family of Charleston is illustrated in Hurst and Prown, Southern Furniture, p. 132.

30 Part 1, p. 20. He added "Gillows warehouse of these manufactures merits a visit."

31 Lancaster Port Commission Papers, Measurement Books, 1781-1813 (Lancaster Library, Lancaster).

32 The firm of Worswick and Allman bought approximately [pounds]765 of unspecified stock from Gillows between January 1787 and 1792 (Ledger 1781-1790, p. 116 [GA 344/53, reel 27], and Ledger 1790-1797, p. 127 [GA 344/54, reel 28]).

33 See Letter Book 1801-1803, p. 63 (GA 344/175, reel 92).

34 The death in Cincinnati on April 16, 1824, of John Edmundson, "formerly of this town, chairmaker" was announced in the Lancaster Gazette on June 12 of that war. He was probably the "J. Edmundson" who advertised that he was working as a chairmaker on Moor Lane in Lancaster in 1811 (Lancaster Gazette, September 7, 1811).

SUSAN STUART is a furniture historian and lecturer and is currently an honorary research fellow at Lancaster University Centre for North-West Regional Studies in Lancaster, England.