The Livingstons' best New York City Federal furniture

Magazine Antiques, May, 1997 by Philip Zimmerman

1 Very localized environmental circumstances, including air movement, affect the rate of oxidation.

2 In early French upholstery linen webbing is woven tightly with no gaps (see Jeffrey Munger, "French Upholstery Practices of the 18th Century," in Upholstery in America and Europe from the Seventeenth Century to World War 1, ed. Edward S. Cooke Jr. [W.W. Norton, New York, 1987], p. 122).

3 A parallel exists in the exceptional "2 Commode Card Tables" Thomas Affleck billed to John Cadwalader in 1771 (see Nicholas B. Wainwright, Colonial Grandeur in Philadelphia: The House and Furniture of General John Cadwalader [Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, 1964], p. 44). The tables, which are examples of the best custom work available in Philadelphia at the time, are markedly different in construction and carved ornament (see Mark Anderson, Gregory Landrey, and Philip D. Zimmerman, Cadwalader Study [Henry Francis du Pont Winterthur Museum, Winterthur, Delaware, 1995], pp. 13-17, Figs. 4-9).

4 Discussed in Gregory R. Weidman, Furniture in Maryland, 1740 1940: The Collection of the Maryland Historical Society (Maryland Historical Society, Baltimore, 1984), No. 148.

5 The Cabinet-Maker and Upholsterer's Drawing-Book (1793; Dover Publications, New York, 1972), pp. 405-406.

6 A tempting possibility for the original drapery is offered by a black crepe pompon and a black cotton strip the same length as the width of the center section of the base, which were both found in one of the drawers.

7 The stenciled number "21059" appears under the domes and on the backs of each case. In 1991 Stephen R. Edidin, a research associate at the New-York Historical Society, pursued the suggestion that the number indicated custom manufacture by French and Company, a prominent New York City arts and antiques dealer established in 1908. However, the company's records, now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, list six Portuguese damask curtains with this stock number (letter from Jeffrey Weaver, October 2, 1991, in the New-York Historical Society object files).

8 Inexact accession records created after World War II implied that the sofas were gifts of the Beekman Family Association, but the proper identification was made after research in the New-York Historical Society's archives was conducted by Jennifer Jacobs, Barbara Woytowicz, and Margaret Tamulonis as part of the society's comprehensive review of its collection. This review began in 1992 and continues today in preparation for the opening (scheduled for 2000) of the Henry Luce III Center for the Study of American Culture, a state-of-the-art facility to house the society's museum collections.

9 The inventory is included in the Petition by The New York Trust Company, Surrogate's Court of the County of New York, file no. 1070-1945, an excerpted copy of which is in the registrar's office of the New-York Historical Society.

10 Richard Livingston's will bequeathed "to my cousin Goodhue Livingston...all my old family furniture which formerly belonged to my great-grandfather, Robert R. Livingston" (see Petition by The New York Trust Company, p. 25).