Furniture Questions Answered

Some Furniture Questions Answered
by Peter Swift Seibert, President, Heritage Center Museum, Lancaster

All too often, the subject of writing or asking about antique furniture raises more questions than time or space will allow. Following my recent lecture at the PAA conference seminar on Pennsylvania German arts in January, there were many questions from attendees that deserved more time than we had in the schedule. To that end, I thought a little more detailed follow-up would be useful: HOW DO YOU TELL A NEW ENGLAND CHEST FROM A PENNSYLVANIA EXAMPLE? Several years ago I lectured at the Henry Francis DuPont Winterthur Museum on the subject of Pennsylvania furniture. The speaker whom I followed was an expert on New England furniture, and both of us got to chatting afterwards about our respective topics. Interestingly, the comment that we both shared is that neither of us could understand the painted furniture being covered by the other person. To me, New England furniture seems almost painfully restrained in its appearance and decoration. Her dislike of Pennsylvania furniture was that it had a business that bordered upon what she saw the worst in later Victorian design. Thus we both agreed that studying New England and Pennsylvania furniture is like comparing oranges and tomatoes. Yes, they are both fruits—but beyond that there are next to
no other similarities. New England painted furniture can be distinguished from Pennsylvania in both the actual construction of the object and its decoration. The English construction techniques
found in New England are hallmarked by thinner wood, small but fine dovetails and an overall feeling in design that closely parallels hardwood furniture. Pennsylvania furniture will curtains and other domestic appointments until the later 19th century) who would place an order and then arrange to have it delivered when completed. Cabinetmakers were among the “top of the food chain” in terms of both the hierarchy of woodworkers and overall numbers of artisans with the result being that they were often well-established in towns and did not need to retain salesmen to go door-to-door. By the Victorian period, with the advent of sales catalogs, traveling salesmen did have miniatures made to aid in selling their wares. However, even at that point, there is pretty strong evidence that most furniture miniatures were made as novelty items for children rather than as advertising pieces.

WHAT ABOUT WOOD ANALYSIS AND PAINT STUDIES?
The subject of wood analysis is a tricky matter since a scientific study of a piece of furniture based just upon a fragment of wood is only one tool in analyzing the story of a piece. Assuming that the fragment is original to the chest, we also have to take into account several issues.
First is whether the cabinetmaker who constructed the piece used local or imported wood (while this is not so true on this side of the pond, there is ample evidence to show that board lumber from America was being shipped to London cabinetmakers in the 18th century). Second is whether the wood was new or re-used from another project. We often see surplus wood being recycled for the insides of desks and chests with the result being that your sample may not be from the same stock as the remainder of the object. Remember, too, that carbon or other dating techniques have such a margin of error that they cannot be used to date pieces from the last five hundred years forward. Finally, in terms of analyzing the origins of piece, scientists have found it
increasingly difficult to determine the differences (especially among conifers) between America and European species of trees. In saying all of that, use wood analysis as a partial tool in understanding the origins of a given piece, but don’t let it be your only resource.

SO IS THERE MORE TO LEARN ABOUT PENNSYLVANIA FURNITURE?
Good golly, Miss Molly…there is tons more that we need to know about Pennsylvania furniture! We know very little about the shop practices of traditional German woodworking shops. How many items were made in a given week/month/ year? Did some shops decorate their own chests while others jobbed out the work? Who carved most of the inlaid Pennsylvania furniture? Why did some designs remain popular for generations and others disappear very quickly? These
questions and many more still need to be answered about the subject of Pennsylvania
German furniture.

WHAT ABOUT THE INFLUENCES OF OTHER GROUPS UPON THE PENNSYLVANIA GERMANS?
That question is equally difficult to answer, as for every hard and fast rule there are probably an equal number of exceptions. There is certainly some evidence of cross- pollination of construction techniques between the German and English cabinetmakers working in Pennsylvania. In particular during the early period (and continuing later in more rural areas), communities could not support a multiplicity of trades (or even individuals working within one
trade) to the extent that Germans and Anglos often patronized a finite number
of artisans. However, in saying that, we do not know about those Germans or Anglos (like
today’s folks who buy a BMW or Saab) chose to leave the area completely for their furnishings. However, among locals buying from locals, there does seem to be some close relationships that developed between the two groups. In at least one documented early 19th century Scots-Irish shop, that of the Hawthorne family business of Marietta (Lancaster County), there are surviving examples of blanket chest that were produced for sale to the local Mennonite population. Those chests differ only in the orientation of the dovetails from the front to the sides of their cases.

SO WHAT CAN I READ TO LEARN MORE?
I always recommend a few key books. To learn about analyzing furniture, I recommend reading John Kirk’s Early American Furniture (New York: A.A. Knopf, 1970). This is a critical work in
teaching you the differences between city and country, high and low style. It stands the test of time even after three decades. Monroe Fabian’s The Pennsylvania- German Decorated Chest (Atglen; Schiffer Publishing reprint in 2004 of the 1978 original edition) is the only book on the
subject. While weak on text, the photographs in the book more than make up for the deficiencies of attribution. Finally, Benno Foreman’s essay German Influences in Pennsylvania Furniture,
printed in Scott Swank’s Arts of the Pennsylvania Germans (Delaware: Henry Francis DuPont Winterthur Museum, 1983), is a strong contribution to the subject of construction and the differences among different types of Pennsylvania German furniture.