Urban precedents for Vermont furniture

Magazine Antiques, May, 1995 by Kenneth Joel Zogry

Boynton was a native of Vermont who had trained in Boston before returning home in 1812 to operate a large shop producing fancy and urbane goods for a number of his neighbors in Windsor and the surrounding towns in the Connecticut River valley.(2)

Among Boynton's competitors was the firm of Thomas Pomroy (1782-1843) and Lemuel Hedge (w. 1811-1826), who were slightly irritated by Boynton's further claim in his advertisement of March 16 that his shop gave "unqualified assurance, that they will not permit their work to be equalled in Vermont." On March 23, 1818, Pomroy and Hedge fired the first round in a war of words by placing an advertisement below Boynton's stating that they can manufacture any kind of Cabinet Work, either in the "French," "Grecian," Arabian, Chinese, Italian, English, or American style, almost as well as those who... "will not permit their work to be EQUALLED in Vermont."

Their work shall recommend itself - yet they acknowledge, that some of their "experienced workmen" have not rubbed against the "fashions and taste of the metropolis."

Boynton, obviously lacking a sense of humor, retorted the next week that his firm is not in the habit of bungling up their stock in the "Chinese," "Arabian," or any other heathenish or savage style...and hope that their work will recommend itself better than sarcasm and ridicule.(4)

A week later the last shot was fired anonymously, although almost certainly by Pomroy and Hedge, when a scathing parody of Boynton's latest advertisement appeared under the heading "T. Bungleton & Co." The notice affected a dialect that can be interpreted as representing an uneducated foreign speaker. It stated that Bungleton's "Vorkman...travel all de vay thro the big town of Bosson, and the city of New York, and bring all de fashun an de taste of de Tropolis on he back."(5)

This extraordinary exchange - perhaps unique in the history of American cabinet-making - encapsulates the importance placed on cosmopolitan design in upcountry New England shops in the early nineteenth century. In Vermont such documentation, and an analysis of the surviving furniture, paint a fascinating picture of the dissemination of urban styles that has not been generally recognized.

Vermont newspaper advertisements before 1850 indicate that for many local cabinetmakers the mere mention of a major city, particularly Boston or New York, intimated a sophistication desired by readers.(6) Apparently it did not matter where the styles came from as long as they were cosmopolitan. For example, the brothers Joseph G. Briggs (b. 1805) and Lyman Briggs (b. 1803) of Montpelier, the capital of Vermont, announced in 1826 that they sold "Fancy Chairs, of the latest New York style."(7) Four years later Lyman Briggs, then working alone, advertised that he had "just returned from Boston, with the latest London Fashions for Cabinet Furniture."

Extant Vermont furniture that emulates urban styles can be divided into three categories: that produced by local makers mimicking specific objects made outside Vermont; that produced by makers trained in cities outside Vermont who immigrated to the state; and that produced by rural makers interpreting the work of shops in larger Vermont towns.

Examples of the first category are most prevalent, and stylistic antecedents can be identified for the earliest known Vermont furniture, dating to the third quarter of the eighteenth century. A rare example in the rococo style is a high chest of drawers made about 1785 that descended in the Dickinson family of southeastern Windham County, adjacent to Massachusetts and across the Connecticut River from New Hampshire (Pl. X). Determining the town in which the chest was made is difficult as the family had ties in the prosperous towns of Putney, Dummerston, and Westminster. It is also possible that this chest was made in neighboring Guilford, the largest town in Vermont by 1791.(9) The form and drawer arrangement are clearly derived from high chests made on the North Shore of Massachusetts. A strikingly similar high chest that may have served as the prototype for the Vermont chest was made in Newbury, Massachusetts, between 1775 and 1780 [ILLUSTRATION FOR FIGURE 1 OMITTED].(10) However, the Vermont chest can be distinguished from the Massachusetts one by construction techniques. The secondary stock is excessively thick and the joinery is crude. The backboards at the top of the case are mounted flush and pinned rather than rabbeted to the sides. Apparently the cabinetmaker did not have access to the proper molding plane to create beaded drawer lips, so he laboriously filed or sanded the edges into a quarter-round shape and scribed lines to suggest a planed finish. Although high chests of drawers appeared in Vermont probate inventories and were advertised by Vermont cabinetmakers as late as 1795, only the one in Plate X and two others can at present be attributed to Vermont.(11)

The rise of the neoclassical taste in America coincided with the flowering of cabinetmaking in Vermont. The northwestern part of the state, bordering Lake Champlain, grew dramatically after Thomas Jefferson's Embargo Act of 1807 and the War of 1812, as large numbers of New Englanders fled their economic plight in search of a better life.(12) Middlebury and Burlington became the largest and most sophisticated towns in the state and supported craftsmen who emulated the styles of both Boston and New York City. Among those who prospered in Middlebury was Hastings Warren,(13) who employed a large number of workmen during the first quarter of the nineteenth century and whose shop may have made the card table shown in Plate IX. Its over-all shape, reeded legs, and central oval inlay are typical of card tables made in and around Boston and Portsmouth, New Hampshire. The Middlebury table is virtually identical to the Portsmouth table of 1816 shown in Plate VIII, with the exception of the legs, which are more boldly turned on the Portsmouth table.(14) The Middlebury table has a canted edge on the fixed half of the top - an element usually associated with Boston card tables. Since many cabinetmakers from Boston immigrated to Vermont through New Hampshire, it is impossible to determine whether this table was made by a cabinetmaker who came straight from Boston or one who came via New Hampshire.