Hidden Treasures

by Leigh Keno

  The foot of the Gibbs bureau reveals Edmind Townsend’s characteristic carving—as well as a splash of red paint on the bracket, left behind by the former owner’s sons.

  The bureau's owner was a reed-thin, elegant older woman with an aristocratic bearing, and as she strode across the walled-in grounds to meet us, I was struck by her resemblance to Katharine Hepburn. Soon, Tom and I were trailing her in our rental car back to the modest home that she shared with her husband and two sons. The details of the house itself remain a bit sketchy to me, for almost immediately upon entering the house, I spotted the Newport bureau standing against a wall just inside the living room. Although it was partially shrouded by a white linen runner and covered with a wide array of silver-framed family photos, I still fell immediately for its wonderful form. Coming face-to-face with a masterpiece is like recognizing a famous actor or actress on the street and being hit by a wave of familiarity for someone (or something) you have never met before. But it is also at these moments that I am struck by the oddity of my job, which requires me to conduct serious business within the intimate confines of a family's home. It creates a strange dynamic that forces me to restrain my blatant curiosity about the furniture with extreme politesse. Sometimes I would like nothing better than to push past a client and fall to my knees before the object, like those far-off days in the woods with Leigh when I pawed through the earth unchecked in search of barn hinges and glass bottles.

  On this day, however, there was no need to finesse the situation because the owner had immediately stepped forward to clear the bureau and Tom and I had only to pitch in and help. As we lifted away the white cloth runner, I noticed a few flecks of what looked to be red paint splashed across the glistening mahogany top and feet of the bureau. The owner, who saw me hesitate at the spots, explained that the bureau had done some hard time as a workstation for her now-grown sons, who had once shared a mutual interest in building model airplanes. The paint, she said, dated to that time.

  There was a brief round of polite laughter in the room, but I thought I detected a flicker of concern in the owner's eyes, which I quickly tried to dispel. I explained to the woman that the paint had no effect on the value of the piece because it simply attested to the life it had lived (and, as it turned out, was easily removed with the flick of a thumbnail). Her eyes warmed with relief just as Tom, picking up on that thread of conversation, stepped back for a moment to elaborate on the subject. And as they launched into a discussion behind me about finish and condition, I reached for the handles of the uppermost drawer, marked by its magnificent trio of carved shells. As the drawer slid out, I looked over the top and saw that the finished drawer sides were made of poplar—a durable local wood often used on the interior of Newport case pieces. The sides joined the mahogany drawer front with wedge-shaped interlocking joints, or dovetails (the form resembles a dove's tail), cut with the precision of clock-gear sprockets. I soon found this attention to detail was typical of the entire piece.

  I was pleased to see that where the posts from the handles screwed into the drawer front, no additional holes cut into the wood, which meant they were almost certainly not replaced. Nevertheless, to confirm their originality, I decided to loosen one of the handles by carefully unscrewing the irregularly cut washers, or nuts, that held it in place. I lifted the handle and back plate away and noticed with satisfaction that a distinct shadow remained, which mimicked the pattern of the hardware I had just taken off. For more than two hundred years, the brass plate had acted as a shield for the surface beneath it, protecting it from the daily pummeling of light and air that had faded the surrounding facade.

  I reattached the pull when I was through and then moved on to examine the three carved shells marking that same upper drawer. Shells were popular decorative devices for much of the eighteenth century in many regions, but the Goddards and Townsends specialized in wide-bodied, robustly carved interpretations of the form (think of the smaller but no less tactile versions seen on the crest rails of Leigh's John Goddard chairs). I swept my hand across one of the two convex outer shells (both seamlessly applied with glue made from animal hide). My fingers rose and fell eleven times along the ripple of alternating lobes and fillets carved to imitate a shell's natural grooves. I followed the gesture of the channels to the point where the shell's lobes narrowed and gathered. Here, smooth wood gave way to texture: The area was filled with a series of stop-fluted intaglio petals that accented the heart of the shell. Stop fluting is a decorative device that involves concave carved channels, each one filled with small lines or reeding. It is another costly detail, and it signals the creativity of the man who had made it. There are plenty of important Newport pieces that don't have extra carving at the center of the shell, so to see it here was an unexpected bonus.

  I stepped back from the piece for a moment to survey the entirety of the design. My eyes ran quickly from the top to the bottom of the bureau, then fixed for a moment on a subtle yet favorite detail of mine, typically found on Goddard and Townsend examples of this form—the distinctive treatment of the ogee bracket feet. Bracket feet are often found on low case pieces because they offer sturdy, load-bearing support.

  An interior view of a drawer showing the original iron lock and brass posts and nuts.

  The desk that took my breath away.

  They are formed by two pieces of wood that join at a corner, with the open side cut to follow a simple pattern, which in the case of the Gibbs desk was an ogee, or S-shaped line. Certainly other cabinetmaking centers, such as Boston or Salem, explored the contours of the ogee bracket foot, but in the hands of the Goddards and Townsends, the device was carried one step further. Here, each foot tapered slightly toward the bottom and was accented by a molded, rounded inner edge (often referred to as beading). At the ends, the beading trailed off into a delicate curlicue, or volute, which gave the design some added flare. Like the stop fluting seen in the carved shells, it was a minor detail, which at first glance might be overlooked but over time would be discovered and appreciated.

  Collectors and scholars alike are often quick to call shell-carved block-front bureaus quintessentially American because the form was little influenced by London-made examples. Newport, unlike other coastal cities, such as Philadelphia, Boston, and New York, did not appear to draw high numbers of London-trained craftsmen. who came fully conversant with the latest furniture fashions from abroad. Instead, the town's cabinet trade remained quite insular. Most of the Goddards and Townsends trained among themselves, which accounts for the localized construction and stylistic details found in their work. Furthermore, the two families had a near monopoly over the high-end cabinet trade of Newport, which meant they had little reason to change their ways.

  The significance of that distinction is made clearer by comparing the Gibbs piece with the flagrantly London-influenced rococo scheme of the tea table once owned by Eddy Nicholson. The two objects were made almost concurrently in Colonial towns with strong Quaker identities, and yet they couldn't be more different. That contrast underscores the allure of regionalism to collectors and makes it clear that in order to appreciate American furniture, you need to place it within a social and historical context.

  Tom and I probably spent about an hour and a half in the owner's home. Before we left, we explained to her how thrilled we were to have seen the piece and just how special we considered it to be. In preparation for our visit, we had scoured the existing literature for similar examples and we actually had a few photocopies in hand. We both agreed that the bureau was likely the handiwork of Edmund Townsend (1736–1811), a third-generation craftsman born to the highly skilled Job Townsend, with whom he likely apprenticed. Of the twenty-five or so shell-carved block-front examples known, only four are signed or labeled by their makers, two of them by Edmund. One labeled example is in the M. and M. Karolik Collection at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, and the other, held in a private collection, features the scrawled signature of the cabinetmaker in graphite on a drawer. Determining w
hich member of the Goddard and Townsend clan was responsible for the desk involved a lot of cross-referencing with other examples, but the case construction and the handling of the carved shells on the Gibbs piece really seemed to match best the two examples attributed to Edmund (both the eleven-lobed shell design and the way in which the top was attached were typical of his hand).

  Within days of our visit to Ticonderoga (and following one long strategy session with Bill Stahl), I approached the owner with a formal proposal for the sale of the desk, bearing an estimate that fell between $350,000 and $450,000. At the time, it was the highest auction estimate ever quoted on a piece of American furniture, one that had taken into account the record-breaking $360,000 sale of the Robb chest of drawers the previous year. The fact that we nearly met that price with our low estimate indicated our extreme confidence in the piece.

  I think the owner's decision to sell the desk was far more heart-wrenching than she had first imagined. The object had been in her family for a long time and she clearly delighted in her heritage. That said, I also know that she had both her sons' college tuitions to think about, and was simply delighted when the piece sailed past its high estimate in January 1983, before being knocked down to dealer Harold Sack for $687,500. I later learned that Sack had come to the sale with the intention of buying the piece for a young couple who had recently done well on Wall Street. The two had set a presale limit with Sack of $500,000, but when the bidding escalated beyond that price, they were thrown by the rapid pace of the sale and were unable to push their limit any further. Freed of his bond with the couple, Sack remained determined to win the piece, and he ended up setting a world record for American furniture. Weeks later, the husband and wife were so filled with regret and longing for the desk that they ended up purchasing it from Sack at a substantial markup, one that far surpassed the 10 percent commission he would have earned had they won it at auction. In other words, they paid a premium for their hesitation at the sale.

  Within months of the sale of the Gibbs desk, Sotheby's American Furniture Department underwent some enormous changes. Bill Stahl moved into a higher position within the company, Tom Lloyd decided to leave the auction world altogether and pursue a career in architecture, and I, the junior member of the group, and not quite twenty-three, was elevated to department head.

  5

  A Philadelphia Story

  DURING THE FIRST WEEK OF OCTOBER 1986, a number of phone messages began piling up on my desk at Sotheby's from a dealer named Chris Machmer. Chris is a big bear of a guy and has a steady, easygoing manner. Like Leigh and me, he grew up around antiques, since his father amassed over many years what is arguably one of the country's finest collections of Pennsylvania German folk art.

  I hadn't found even a minute to get back to Chris. But when I finally did, he said in a less-than-veiled reference to my tardiness, “I think you'll be really glad you returned my calls.”

  He paused for a moment and then continued with evident glee. “What would you say if I told you I knew where you could find Gen. John Cadwalader's hairy-paw-foot armchair?”

  What would I say? Gen. John Cadwalader (1742–1786) was one of the most prominent men in late-eighteenth-century Philadelphia, if not the colonies, and the details of the splendid Second Street town house that he shared with his wife, Elizabeth Lloyd (1742–1776), a Maryland heiress, are legendary. The Cadwaladers had bought the three-story Georgian house, located in the heart of the city's most fashionable district, in 1769. Immediately after the purchase, the new owners undertook a massive renovation of its interior. They raided Philadelphia's craft community to bring the reigning style of the day—the gorgeous and excessively elaborate rococo—to life in their home.

  The Cadwaladers commissioned entire rooms that included interior paneling with carved ceiling cornices and friezes, extravagant new surrounds for the fireplaces, windows, and doorways, and molded ornamental stucco and gilt. The carving featured flowers, ribbons, egg-and-tongue moldings, birds, allegorical figures, and even a pair of dragons for the pediment above the parlor door. Then they filled these newly appointed rooms with elaborate avant-garde furnishings made to match the rich decor. By the time they were through, the Cadwaladers had spent well over £3,500 revamping the interior of their home and another £1,500 on furnishings—both astounding sums of money for that era.

  Today, many people, including those of us in the auction business, often use the blanket term Chippendale to describe the ornate style that was put to great use in the Cadwalader home, but the name is really a misnomer. Thomas Chippendale was a London-based cabinetmaker, whose design book, The Gentleman & Cabinet-Maker's Director, first published in 1754, met with enormous popularity in both England and the United States. But Chippendale was far from alone in his influence on the age, and most historians now agree that the busy designs of the rococo have roots that reach back to antiquity.

  But whatever the term used to describe this aesthetic, its beauty was not enough to preserve the Cadwalader place indefinitely. Sometime after the death of the general, the town house was rented out and eventually sold and the furniture dispersed among his five surviving children. By 1820, the house had been demolished and the site redeveloped.

  Fortunately, many of the original bills and receipts for the Cadwalader renovations were preserved and are now housed at the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, which has allowed scholars to witness, in effect, the painstaking refurbishment of the house (Nicholas B. Wainwright's book Colonial Grandeur in Philadelphia: The House and Furniture of General John Cadwalader is the classic source on the renovations). It is now known, for example, that for its most important room—an elegant double parlor—Cadwalader and his wife commissioned an ornate set of furniture from the gifted craftsman Thomas Affleck (1740–1795). Like many in the elite crew who worked on the Cadwalader home, Affleck, a Scotsman, had trained in London before coming to Philadelphia, which meant he was well versed in the latest design trends. On October 13, 1770, Affleck billed the Cadwaladers £119.8 for goods, including a pair of commode card tables (commode is a period term used to describe a swayed or serpentine front), three large sofas, and a matching easy chair (valued at £4.10). Additional charges at the bottom of the bill from the carving firms of James Reynolds and the partners Nicholas Bernard and Martin Jugiez indicate that Affleck subcontracted the decorative carving for the suite. A separate receipt from the preeminent Philadelphia upholsterer Plunkett Fleeson shows that he stuffed the set as soon as that carving was completed, and supplied an accompanying set of blue-and-white-checked cotton slipcovers for use during the summer.

  Since the Cadwalader household was disbanded, very few of its furnishings have resurfaced in the public arena. The largest disbursement of property probably occurred in 1904 at an auction held in Philadelphia of the property of John's great-grandson, Dr. Charles E. Cadwalader. Some copies of the catalog have survived and prove that the sale included a tantalizingly high number of items bearing descriptions that echoed those found in the Cadwalader receipts and inventories. (Oh, how I would have liked to have been there!) Soon after the auction, Dr. Cadwalader and his new wife (formerly the family's Irish maid) moved to her homeland, taking with them the few family pieces that they still owned.

  In 1969, one of the serpentine-front card tables listed on Thomas Affleck's bill turned up in Canada and was found to match a second one that had a history of descent in the Cadwalader family (the two are now at the Philadelphia Museum). Both have elaborately carved undulating skirts and legs and rigorously carved hairy-paw feet, which resemble the paws of a lion. In 1983, another Cadwalader card table, this one with a less elaborate, straight front, surfaced in Pittsburgh and sold in our galleries. In 1974, five mahogany side chairs with hairy-paw feet sold at a Sotheby's sale in London; their skirt and leg pattern matched exactly the carving of the two card tables. As it turned out, the consignor had received the chairs from a friend, who had purchased them at an estate auction in Ireland during the 1930s, which meant they
had probably arrived there in the company of Dr. Charles Cadwalader. Sotheby's ended up sending the chairs to New York, where they sold for a total of $207,500, an incredible sum at that time.

  One of a pair of hairy-paw-foot card tables listed on cabinetmaker Thomas Affleck's original bill of sale to General Cadwalader.

  Meanwhile, another chair from this well-traveled set descended in the Lewis family of Philadelphia. The Lewises had been neighbors of the Cadwaladers. Early in the twentieth century, that chair was taken to Florence, Italy, by its owners and was later bequeathed to an Italian house servant, in whose family the chair remained until it arrived at Sotheby's in 1982 (I was there on the loading dock to greet it), where it eventually sold for $275,000.

  Since the few surviving Cadwalader pieces had ended up in such far-flung and often unlikely locales, if Chris Machmer could tell me the location of any piece of furniture from this renowned household—let alone an item from that fanciful parlor suite—it would be nothing short of a miracle. Knowing Chris, I wasn't sure if he was just getting back at me for not calling him sooner or if he was serious. But Chris was indeed serious, and as he began to explain what he knew of the chair's more recent history, I became serious, too.