The quest of the colonial

Contents

CHAPTER PAGE

i Making a Beginning 3 hi The Finding of Old-time Houses .... 50

iv Altering the House 67

Chapter I

WITH ourselves, the kettle began it! Or was it the first pair of candlesticks ! Or the Shaker chair ! Rather, it would seem, on looking back upon the gradual inception of the plan, that it was the combined influence of the chair and the candlesticks and the kettle.

The kettle, a charming ebony-handled thing, squat, round, of captivating curves, the body of it made in two parts but with such skill that the brazed edge almost defies detection and there is thus the air of having been hammered out of a single sheet, came ancestrally, having crossed the ocean many decades ago.

The candlesticks caught the eye, one day, by a felicitous chance,' on the window-ledge of a shop prosaically devoted to the buying and selling of scrap metal. They are nine and a quarter inches high and of excellent design. Indeed, after all these following years of quest and success, they stand honorably among our treasured acquisitions. Very dirty they were, those brasses, in that old-metal window, and the fragments of tallow dip candles were green in their sockets. They were indubitably old as well as graceful, and they were offered and purchased at the price of twenty cents apiece. To be sure, they needed burnishing, but that was but a small matter.

The chair was an acquisition still more delightful in the course of its coming. For there was a Shaker settlement near the city where we used to live, and it was a pleasure to visit there, so hospitable were the kindly aged folk, and amid such an aroma of sweetness did they lead their celibate lives.

We wondered at times, finding them so gently cordial to us, when we knew that the cold text of their religion taught them to be distrustful of people

Candlesticks and Snuffers

i Brass candlesticks; Delaware. 2 Bought for ten cents; Sheffield plate. 3 Sheffield; classic pillar. 4 Sheffield; rococo. 5 Sheffield pair; concave panels. 6 Brass; old French. 7 The first acquisition ; from junk-shop window. 8 Bedroom candlestick. 9 Old snuffers. 10 From old warship.

of the outside world and to hold but necessary communication with them, whether they hoped to draw us in as proselytes for their community, so sorely in need of younger blood; but if they ever cherished the hope that we should find inward and spiritual grace among them they assuredly gave no outward and visible sign that such was their thought. They were hospitable, in a simple, old-fashioned way, and we were welcome to enter their doors, to walk through their halls, with polished floors, covered with long strips of rag carpeting, and with everywhere an odor of herbs and of sanctity; we were welcome at their meals of bread and butter, and fried chicken, and jelly of apple and sauce of pear, when, in silence, the men ate at a long table at one side of the great dining-room and the women, as silent, at the other. Back to back they sat, with the broad space between ; and one standing in the middle would have seen, on the one hand, a line of men’s heads, bent over the table, a row of blue coats, with tails carefully parted on either side of the low-backed chairs, and, on the other side, a row of little muslin caps, and plain tippets and dresses of calico.

These people, self set apart from the world, showed us the inside corners of their warm hearts; and it seems, looking back upon it, as if the taste for the quaint and the old-fashioned, even then strong within us, was strengthened by knowing these folk, who seemed like veritable bits out of the past. They themselves realized that there was something in accord between us, and one of the oldest of the Sisters gave us her own particular chair which had been made specially for her, in her youth, when she taught sewing to the children whom they then had in their school.

It is a slender, narrow rocker, with slim, high back; impossible to rock, indeed, for the dear old lady had found it liable to tip over backward, or to threaten to tip, and so had had one of the Brothers saw off the rockers short and fasten on the stubby ends prohibitive bits of cork. The chair, charmingly proportioned, with low-set arms, has nothing about it that is elaborate; the code of Shakerism allows nothing of display; but it is most carefully made, is splint-bottomed, with a curious variety of Roman-key design, and the ends of the arms and the tops of the side pieces end in delicately ovaled knobs.

The chair stands in a corner of our guest-room, holding in kindly remembrance the kindly folk, hundreds of miles from where we now are, by whom, long ago, we were made welcome guests.

And so, from the possession of these grew the idea of outfitting our home with the charming and stately furniture of the past, with the mahogany and the walnut, the brass and the china, of the olden time. Even with this beginning, the idea was slowly adopted, with much of hesitating dubiety as to the possibility of it all. For, until we had well begun, the plan seemed so impractical, so impracticable !

This sense of the ultimate futility of the attempt, even after a few delightful acquisitions, was strong within us because of our living in a city of the Middle West, where old-fashioned furniture is, necessarily, far less common than in the Eastern States, but even had we then lived in the East there would have been little encouragement shown us. To see the charming things of long ago is offered with generous freedom, alike in the superb collections of public organizations and in the fine old Colonial mansions, in various States, given into the charge of patriotic societies and filled by them with the furniture of the past. But the line between seeing and acquiring is clearly drawn. Those who show with opulent freedom will only suggest, for purchasing, to go directly and prosaically to the shops where things with claim to age are sold.

But it was no part of our scheme to obtain our treasure prosaically or from sources open to any degree of doubt. From the very first we experienced, with the joy of having, the concomitant joy of getting. With our earliest acquisitions, the Shaker chair, the candlesticks and the kettle, there was the tang of some delightful association and the charm of the personal touch, and we were resolved, having delightfully begun, not to be content with methods and results less interesting.

And here, first, is the fact which, little appreciated, lies at the bottom of it all. There is, as yet, no essential scantiness of supply of the delightful and desirable old! There is just enough of scantiness to render the quest alluring.

And it would be strange if there were any prohibitive scantiness. A century ago there were in existence millions of pieces of furniture of the shapes that are now held in admiration. Things that are now the possessions of a few were then the common possession of all. In one single year, near the opening of the century just past, the shop of a single Connecticut maker turned out the movements for three thousand tall clocks. Other things were made in numbers proportionate — tables, chairs, bureaus, andirons, candlesticks. So many were the mechanics engaged in the manufacture of furniture, that the

[iol trade came to be in some degree specialized, and there were men engaged in nothing but the construction of Windsor chairs !

All of these millions of articles were not destroyed, all were not worn out and thrown away or turned over to museums. An enormous total is still in existence; great numbers of pieces may be sought out and secured by the collector of to-day.

Realizing this — and how few realize it ! — it is but a matter of learning where to seek with the greatest prospect of finding.

Although it is in the East that far the greatest number remain in existence, we found that in the Middle West there came many a fine specimen by ox-cart from Connecticut to the shores of Lake Erie; many were flat-boated down the Ohio in the early days of settlement or trailed through Cumberland Gap by the pioneers of Kentucky; and, farther South, many a piece went westward from the Carolinas, or, entering the Mississippi, remained at some point along the river’s banks. Although the bulk of furniture remained in Boston, New York, Philadelphia, in Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Virginia, or elsewhere near the coast, the early folk of Cleveland and Louisville and St. Louis, of Pittsburg, Cincinnati and New Orleans, were not without old treasures. In what was deemed the backwoods there were houses of log or hewed timber in which family silver alternated with gourds, and in which fine mahogany stood on puncheon floors. And, in the West as in the East, during the period that the taste prevailed — the taste which has so strongly revived— additional furniture was made, on the graceful lines of the old, by local cabinet-makers. And outside of the known lines of travel and of settlement, many a piece of fine design has wandered erratically to some most unexpected spot and is waiting to be discovered and appropriated.

Theoretically, there is no reason, except the powerful one that the old was all hand-made, why the furniture of to-day is not fully as beautiful as that of the past. But it is not, any more than the churches of to-day equal the ancient cathedrals. In such cases it is matter of fact, not of theory. The graceful lines and proportions, in furniture, are mainly of a bygone era, save in the cases of successful imitation. And, in addition to the actual grace, the actual beauty, there is the charm of association with an interesting past. The tender grace of a day that is dead lingers about the stately fireirons of the time of Washington or the beautiful chair which was used in a house of Revolutionary fame. The charm once felt, it never disappears.

There are so many directions in which one may profitably go, in the search of the old, that it must needs be matter for needful planning. By a judicious distribution of vacation trips many a point can be touched. By those of greater leisure there can be any degree of expeditionary meanderings. Often a business trip takes one to a place where a longed-for treasure may be secured.

The quest will be likely to last over years. But it is such an enjoyable quest, in its experiences as well as in its rewards, that one does not wish it to be shorter. Old-time acquisitions can never be very greatly prized if, with a full pocketbook, a visit is made to a dealer and instructions given to outfit the house. It is the personal touch which comes from the personal finding, it is the definite association, it is the knowledge that one knows precisely what, in each case, one is getting, it is the personal adventure, and oftentimes the personal history, that give value, in addition to the value the find has intrinsically.

With patience and attention, with watchfulness and an ever-ready preparedness to take advantage when opportunity offers, the search for the furniture of our forefathers is as easy as it is full of delight and of surprises.

But, first, some misconceptions must be put away.

In America no one, no matter how wealthy, can fill his house with genuine pieces of the seventeenth century, for the museums and a few old families have almost every piece. Few, no matter how wealthy, can fill their houses with pieces of a period anterior to the Revolution. And it is because of these facts, which are well known, that the gathering of furniture of the olden time is looked upon as an insuperable task.

Fortunately, it was not until more than a quarter of a century after the close of the Revolution that the commonizing change in the making of furniture came. The triumph of the styles of Heppelwhite and of Sheraton came late in the eighteenth century. The triumphant beauty of the early Empire came, as the name denotes, early in the nineteenth.

But, in spite of this, the term “Colonial” is attached to all of the furniture of the early times and the early shapes. It has come to be so generally employed, and is a term in itself so suggestive and so sonorous, that it would be invidious indeed to strive to limit its use with chilly literalness.

Nor must all of “Colonial furniture” needs be of mahogany. There is no such narrowing limitation. Mahogany is the most beautiful of all wood for this purpose, yet many of the finest old shapes are of

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Brass Andirons i Found under a porch in South Carolina. 2 Rights and lefts; made for the inn fireplace in 1825. 3 The oldest pair; full of wasps when found. 4 The acorn-top andirons from Blen-

nerhassett Island. 5 From near the Connecticut line. 6 From an old house in Tallahassee.

walnut or hickory or cherry or oak or ash. The greater part of the finest old French furniture, too, was not of mahogany.

With the furniture of the past there should go the brass and the iron, the silver and the pewter, of the corresponding time. Certain prints and silver and porcelain from the other side of the Atlantic, if they harmonize in design and period, are acquisitions. In short, in the gathering of “Colonial furniture,” of furniture of the past, think of no restriction but that of unbeautiful shape, no limitation but that of unattractiveness. One thing after another should be so chosen as to be a lesson in good taste.

And so, with these preliminary suggestions as to the limitations which broaden the possibilities of the quest, we shall return to the narrative of our own getting, as in no better way can we illustrate the methods and the potentialities.

The love for the antique grows by what it feeds on. Deep within our hearts lay that love, ready for development and growth.

And Fate was very complaisant in those early days of our gathering. It is likely enough that, had there then been numerous disappointments, our ardor would have been chilled. But, as encouragement at the commencement, and marking the everexistent possibility of finding prizes in unexpected places, we secured a distinguished pair of brass andirons at a place where it would have been deemed absolutely impossible to get them.

That impracticable place was Blennerhassett Island ! For almost every particle of the furnishings of that stately mansion which made the island famous was lost in the fire and looting which followed the failure of Burr to carve for himself, out of the West, an empire that was to wax strong among the nations of the earth. Now but the barest vestiges of the foundations of the mansion are to be seen. And as for the furniture and the smaller belongings of the scholar and gentleman who cast in his fortune with the would-be Napoleon, the island was long ago swept clear of any trace of them.

And yet, when we went there, we found a treasure out of the past ! And it was not something offered, by an island resident, as having belonged to Blennerhassett or as having been used by Burr.

There had been a heavy flood in the Ohio ; one of those floods which come every dozen years or so, when the stream swells to mighty volume and overflows vast stretches of land and sweeps away fences and houses and barns.

In walking about the little island, with a man who

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had long lived there and who was well acquainted with the outlines of the great, semi-circular house, with the site of the old-time landing place, with the curious local history, he remarked that Blennerhassett had not chosen most wisely from the standpoint of one who wished to use the island for residence purposes only, because, rich as it is as farm land, and superbly located as it is in the midst of the bending stream, it becomes periodically untenable.

Then, thus reminded, he went on to tell how, driven to the mainland by the last flood, he watched the water’s steady rise during the day, and next morning, looking across at his submerged island from his West Virginia refuge, he saw that a dwellinghouse had stranded there. In the course of the day he was able, with a companion, to row over to it. No one was within. But the furniture was in place, just as the fleeing family had left it; and the two men put into their boat this pair of acorn-top andirons, which they lifted from the hearth, and a little round-topped hair trunk which was standing in a corner.

Another morning came; but the river had risen afresh in the night, and had picked up the stranded house and carried it away. They opened the trunk, but there was nothing in it to give the slightest hint as to where the house had floated from. It might have floated a hundred miles or more. A mystery it had come, and had but touched there for a few hours on its way to the oblivion into which it disappeared.

The man, although impressed by the strangeness of it all, clearly set no particular value on what he had found; his “plunder,” as he called it. He showed the andirons, and we admired them.

“Should n’t you like to trade those for a hammock^”

It was certainly a curious thing for two travelers to have, and, in truth, it was an odd chance that it happened to be in our possession at the psychic moment. We had left it on the mainland while we rowed over to the island, and it had seen a summer’s use.

The unexpectedness of a hammock appealed to him.

“Yes; if I like the looks of it,” he said.

He liked it, and the precious andirons became ours.

Now, when one can go to the place where, a century ago, every vestige of movable interest vanished, and find the very floods work in his behalf to carry to his feet a pair of brass andirons, with a strange association of romantic Blennerhassett and a haunting history full of possibilities — for the andirons are of a design such as those which came across the mountains in the earliest days of Western settlement, and the house which held them came floating out of vagueness only to vanish into misty vagueness again — anything is possible.

These andirons came shortly after the Shaker chair, and had strong influence in confirming us in the thought of realizing our dream of charming potentialities.

Our Lares and Penates were to be of mahogany and brass !

Chapter II

VERY early in the quest of the old, one comes to realize that there is often an important difference between finding a prize and securing it. Many of those who possess old furniture have a high and just appreciation of it, and in such cases the right-minded collector does not wish to get it. But there are other owners, who neither prize a thing themselves nor permit it to pass into other hands.

In the garret of one of the oldest houses of the Western Reserve we discovered an old grandfather’s clock. It had been made in Connecticut; it had been carried to the shores of Lake Erie in those early days when the wilderness was still unbroken, when the pioneers took with them indispensable furniture, household supplies, clothing, shoes for every member of the family for years to come and for children still unborn. And here the clock was, after years of usefulness, lying flat on its face on the floor. It had lain there, said the owner, indifferently, for thirty years, waiting to be repaired. He would neither repair it nor set it up, nor would he let any clock-lover obtain it.

And so, although there is somewhat of whimsicality in feeling annoyance because a man does as he pleases with his own, we none the less felt annoyed.

It was not long after this experience that we obtained, from an old house on Long Island, the tall grandfather’s clock which we still possess. And our difficulties with it have been full of amusing instruction for us.

The clock is of good shape and design, it is of good height, full seven feet and five inches, and the top is of that charming “broken-arch” or “bonnet-top” design which first made its appearance in the furniture of Queen Anne’s time, and was not much used before 1730.

But this clock does not date back so far as that. The dial-plate is of white enamel, and this alone, to begin with, would show that it was not made before the latter part of the Revolution. Before that the dials were of metal; of silver-plate or of brass.

There are other indications which fix the date at not long after 1790.

There is neither date nor the name of the maker, but it is often surprising, in fixing the age of furniture, how much can be determined from the style and the ornamentation.

The design, on the upper part of the dial-face of this clock, of an eagle, two American flags and two shields, shows that it was not made before the eagle became the national emblem.

And this design is amusingly worthy of examination as an example of bucolic heraldry. The shields are held out on the ends of two sticks, giving the precise effect of spades. The flags are a trifle nondescript in character. The colors of flags and spades are soft red and white and blue, softened still more by age. But the eagle is brown — a golden eagle — and with outstretched wings is perched, not on some classic pedestal, but on the ridge of a barn! The barn is tiny. It is scarcely half the size of the eagle itself. But it is none the less, unmistakably, a plain barn, such as the maker of the design must often have seen large birds perched upon. The entire effect, although it can scarcely be called artistic, is very pleasing, and proves at least an independence of thought on the part of the simple-hearted maker.

Typical Legs and Feet of Important Styles i A cabriole or bandy leg, with a web foot; Chippendale period. 2 A cabriole leg, with claw-and-ball foot ; Chippendale. 3 The tapering inlaid leg used by Heppelwhite. 4 The slender fluted or reeded leg typical of Sheraton. 5 The winged-claw foot typical of the Empire period. 6 The snake-foot, with its swelling spread at the end ; made after 1740

The tall cased-in clock stands with a dignity and simplicity of line that are very charming. And it cost but twelve dollars, which is very little for an old, brass-ornamented grandfather’s clock.

But it has wooden works! And among the mistakes which collectors just beginning are liable to make, the getting of a clock with wooden works is one.

Not but that wooden works have some degree of special merit. They seem, indeed, to give an air of greater simplicity and age. But, although this effect is right enough as to simplicity, that of age is quite factitious. As a matter of fact, all of the oldest tall clocks have works of brass. The putting in of works of wood came through an enforced simplicity of life resulting from the Revolution. Economy of price was suited to the hard and barren years of the end of the century.

Clocks of this kind are to be prized, as they represent an unquestioned Americanism. Most of them were made in Connecticut, a place noted for the manufacture of other small, round, wooden things besides cog-wheels of clocks, and the one we have was doubtless carried thence across the Sound. But their disadvantage lies in liability to get out of order, and in the difficulty of getting them repaired.

One is tempted to wish for the reincarnation of that ancient clockmakers’ guild, of nearly three hundred years ago, whose members were authorized to seek out and confiscate clocks, as the old charter naively had.it, “with bad and deceitful works.” Ask a modern clockmaker to repair wooden works, and he will shake his head, with a smile. “No one can do that nowadays !”

Our tall clock stopped running, after a house moving, and nothing would coax it to go. It was obdurate. No one could be found who could overcome its exasperating inertia.

Once in a while we tried to fix it ourselves, and a kitchen table covered with wooden wheels that looked like pie-crust markers became a familiar sight. We vainly tried to decide upon the part that failed. We vainly made easy the way of the possible transgressor with tallow or the prized panacea of graphite. Vainly we tickled the escapement with quill of oil. Long it stood, silent and lifeless, as if worn out with keeping time. But at length we heard of a queer mechanical genius who lived solitary, on a solitary farm, some miles away.

No sooner heard of than we drove there with pendulum, weights and works. We found him living in the midst of a medley of mechanical contrivances.

Arm-chaij of early and rare design 2

Chair with jar-shaped splat and cabriole legs

Early type, wooden seat

Back with simple, fine lines

Jar-shaped splat, with urn; spade feet

A good, average example of Chippendale

Chippendale Chairs

I

His water was pumped, his cattle were fed, his wagons were hitched, his clothes were hung upon the line, his doors were opened, his shingles were made, his wood was sawed, by one or another of his queer devices. A vastly interesting character, he; and if the getting of wooden works in a clock could but assure the resultant finding of such a human treasure, then the getting of wooden works would be the thing advisable.

To him the fixing of the wooden works was easy. He delighted in doing what no one else could do. And the old clock ticks in our hall, in solemn dignity, as becomes the representative of exigent, inexorable, but gravely decorous Time.

No one can gather a collection without, in the beginning, making mistakes. Now and then, as others do, we picked up the wrong thing, and, finding it out in the course of time, discarded it. It would be difficult to name any line of acquisition in which greater care is requisite. Not only is eternal vigilance the price of having genuine specimens but it must be a vigilance well informed. And even though the pieces in a collection be genuine, there must also be, to enjoy them to the full, some knowledge of styles and names and makes.

There are no names in more common use, in de* scribing styles of furniture, than those of Chippendale, Heppel white and Sheraton. To these might be added numerous others, the most important being Empire, Adam and Jacobean.

Chippendale was a cabinet-maker of the middle of the eighteenth century. He published a book of designs of furniture, and his name has come to stand for the work of an entire school. There are few articles of furniture on this side of the Atlantic that were made in his own shop, but other workers copied him closely, as he intended them to do. More than four-score cabinet-makers of London are known to have subscribed for his book, and workers in America also eagerly followed his style.

He was a man of forcefulness and originality. He eschewed inlay and veneer and depended for his effects on proportion, strength and craftsmanship. The typical Chippendale chair, in particular, is always recognizable. It has a certain bow-shaped top, and down the middle of the back runs a graceful perforated splat.

There is a wide variety of shape with Chippendale furniture. That he expected. With the design for a certain kind of a chair he would not only give dimensions, and rules for putting together, but he would show differences of possible detail, so that the cabi-

With typical space above the seat, below splat and cross-bar

A back view, showing structure

Sheraton Chairs

Typical rectangular back Beautiful example. The three feathers are used because the Prince of Wales was Regent when this chair was made

With graceful, perforated balusters. Cushion hides space above seat With wide space under cross-bar net-maker using his designs could present them all for the choice of the customer for whom the work was to be done. Different splats were shown, and often a single cut would present one leg straight and one leg cabriole, one-half of a chair with infoliated carving, or shell ornament, or fretwork design, and the other half without; so that one single cut might stand for a dozen different chairs, making thus variety in unity.

To some extent Chippendale adapted from existent shapes. And, oddly enough, not all the shapes known as his are to be found in his published book.

He made no sideboards, as the term is nowadays understood. His sideboards were but side-tables. The sideboard with drawers came in later and may be either Sheraton or Heppelwhite or Empire ; although it has come to be common, especially with dealers, to use the term “Chippendale sideboard” on account of the appeal of the name.

After some years of vogue, the Chippendale style was displaced by others, but it has recently come into its own again.

Heppelwhite was a London cabinet-maker who came into prominence about the time of our Revolution. His chairs were less strong than those of Chippendale, because of the construction of the backs, which were always of the shape of heart or shield or oval, and most of them delicately beautiful. Fewer of these chairs are in existence, as they did not wear well.