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Displaying items by tag: Cabinetmaker
The 18th-century cabinetmaker Nathaniel Gould left inkblots in his battered gray notebooks as he recorded the luxurious mahogany output of his workshop in Salem, Mass. His listings of clients and fees, found seven years ago in forgotten boxes at the Massachusetts Historical Society in Boston, have enabled researchers to attribute his mostly unsigned antiques. Next weekend, about 20 of these pieces will go on view at the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem in the exhibition “In Plain Sight: Discovering the Furniture of Nathaniel Gould.”
The show’s catalog blends tragic family lore with statistics. Gould’s clients lost their furniture in fires, their fortunes in bankruptcies and war and their family members in shipwrecks. Coffins for children were among his workshop’s frequent commissions.
Furniture tells us much about the past—about social customs and human interaction, about the relationship between Americans and the world, about the changing nature of technology and the evolution of aesthetics. The Cabinetmaker and the Carver: Boston Furniture from Private Collections, October 4, 2013–January 17, 2014 is part of Four Centuries of Massachusetts Furniture, a unique initiative undertaken by eleven cultural institutions to celebrate and document the Commonwealth’s long tradition of furniture making that started in Boston in the 1630s and continues today.1 This exhibition offers visitors to the Massachusetts Historical Society in Boston a rare opportunity to see nearly fifty examples of significant furniture borrowed from private collections in the greater Boston area. Ranging in date from the late seventeenth century to about 1900, these privately held treasures, supplemented with documents, portraits, and other material from the MHS collections, provide in capsule form a look at the trajectory of cabinetmaking in the Hub.
Michael K. Brown, a longtime curator at Bayou Bend Collection and Gardens of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, passed away on September 8, 2013 following a heart transplant. Brown, a leading scholar in the field of American decorative arts, was 60 years old. He touched many lives as a scholar and as one of the most gracious and kind lights of the decorative arts world.
Bayou Bend, one of the nation’s premier collections of American paintings and decorative arts, welcomed Brown as associate curator in 1980. An authority on American silver and a specialist in the work of 19th-century New York cabinetmaker, Duncan Phyfe, Brown leaves behind an inspiring legacy. During his time at Bayou Bend, Brown worked tirelessly to better the institution and helped lead a renovation and restoration to the room settings that are the museum’s landmark.
In addition to his work at Bayou Bend, Brown published dozens of books and articles on American decorative arts, architecture and history and regularly spoke at forums and symposia. He was also an active board member for Houston’s Heritage Society, Preservation Houston and the Victorian Society in America.
David B. Warren, founding director emeritus of Bayou Bend, said, “Michael Brown was my colleague at Bayou Bend for more than two decades; he was a quiet, intense man, who always pursued excellence. As a curator his work was marked by impeccable scholarship, diligent research and, exercising an extraordinary eye, an intrepid pursuit of acquisitions of the most superb quality, whether large or small.”
Brown is survived by his three brothers and their families along with Bart Truxillo of Houston. The museum will hold a memorial in October. Contributions may be made to the Bayou Bend Collection Accessions Fund in Memory of Michael K. Brown; or, to the Michael K. Brown Metals Endowment Fund, c/o Bayou Bend Collection and Gardens, P.O. Box 6826, Houston, Texas, 77265.
NEW YORK, N.Y. – New York switches into high gear on Sunday, January 15, the official start of Americana Week. Before things get too hectic, make a point of visiting “The World of Duncan Phyfe: The Arts of New York, 1800-1847,”at Hirschl & Adler Galleries through February 17.
Gallery president Stuart P. Feld, a longtime enthusiast of American neoclassical design, and his daughter, Elizabeth, managing director of the firm’s decorative arts department, organized this selling exhibition of more than one hundred pieces of furniture, silver, lighting, timepieces, porcelain, painting, prints and sculpture made or used in fashionable New York residences in the first decades of the nineteenth century. Twenty more pieces once sold by Hirschl & Adler have been loaned to the display.
Accompanied by a 150-page illustrated catalogue, the exhibition contrasts furniture made by Duncan Phyfe (1770–1854), New York’s best known cabinetmaker, with examples by or attributed to his contemporaries, notably Charles-Honoré Lannuier, Michael Allison, Thomas Seymour, Joseph Brauwers, Thomas Constantine, J. & J.W. Meeks, Alexander Roux and Charles A. Baudoine.
Hirschl & Adler’s presentation serves as a pendant to “Duncan Phyfe: Master Cabinetmaker in New York,” the landmark exhibition jointly organized by Peter Kenny of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Michael Brown of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, on view in New York through May 6. Both shows illuminate Phyfe’s underappreciated middle and late periods as never before.
This is the fourth collaboration for Feld and Feld, who are celebrating Hirschl & Adler Galleries’ 60th anniversary. Filling five galleries and two hallways, “The World of Duncan Phyfe” is also the first comprehensive display of decorative arts in Hirschl & Adler’s newly renovated, 13,000 square foot quarters in midtown Manhattan, on the fourth floor of the Crown Building. For that reason and many others, a visit is well worthwhile.
For more, visit www.hirschlandadler.com.
Write to Laura Beach at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
NEW YORK, N.Y. – New York switches into high gear on Sunday, January 15, the official start of Americana Week. Before things get too hectic, make a point of visiting “The World of Duncan Phyfe: The Arts of New York, 1800-1847,”at Hirschl & Adler Galleries through February 17. Gallery president Stuart P. Feld, a longtime enthusiast of American neoclassical design, and his daughter, Elizabeth, managing director of the firm’s decorative arts department, organized this selling exhibition of more than one hundred pieces of furniture, silver, lighting, timepieces, porcelain, painting, prints and sculpture made or used in fashionable New York residences in the first decades of the nineteenth century. Twenty more pieces once sold by Hirschl & Adler have been loaned to the display. Accompanied by a 150-page illustrated catalogue, the exhibition contrasts furniture made by Duncan Phyfe (1770–1854), New York’s best known cabinetmaker, with examples by or attributed to his contemporaries, notably Charles-Honoré Lannuier, Michael Allison, Thomas Seymour, Joseph Brauwers, Thomas Constantine, J. & J.W. Meeks, Alexander Roux and Charles A. Baudoine. Hirschl & Adler’s presentation serves as a pendant to “Duncan Phyfe: Master Cabinetmaker in New York,” the landmark exhibition jointly organized by Peter Kenny of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Michael Brown of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, on view in New York through May 6. Both shows illuminate Phyfe’s underappreciated middle and late periods as never before. This is the fourth collaboration for Feld and Feld, who are celebrating Hirschl & Adler Galleries’ 60th anniversary. Filling five galleries and two hallways, “The World of Duncan Phyfe” is also the first comprehensive display of decorative arts in Hirschl & Adler’s newly renovated, 13,000 square foot quarters in midtown Manhattan, on the fourth floor of the Crown Building. For that reason and many others, a visit is well worthwhile. For more, visit www.hirschlandadler.com. Write to Laura Beach at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
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