Library bookcase, 1765-75.
The design of this rare Charleston piece, altered over time,
comes directly from Chippendale's Director. Mahogany and
mahogany veneer with mahogany and cypress. MESDA.
By Laura Beach
WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. -- When John Bivins, Jr -- the multitalented
scholar, carver and gun maker -- died too young at 60 in August
2001, a library would have burned to the ground had Bivins not
recently completed, with Bradford L. Rauschenberg, a draft of the
duo's magnum opus, .
Published in March by the Museum of Early Southern Decorative
Arts,The Furniture of Charlestonis as epic a study as has
ever been undertaken in the field of American decorative arts,
leaving no stone unturned in its exhaustive effort to document
the furniture forms and artisans native to what was, until the
end of the Eighteenth Century, the richest city in English
America.
Enclosed in a slip case, the three-volume, 2,800-page work
includes 440 pieces of furniture, 680 biographies of craftsmen,
1,400 images and 250 color plates. Compiled from primary sources
-- including manuscripts, wills, deeds, inventories, newspapers
and directories -- and data accumulated over more than three
decades of field research, it is without prototype or parallel.
Scholars' understanding of the furniture trades in Colonial and
Federal cities such as Boston, New York and Philadelphia is
fragmentary by comparison.
The Furniture of Charlestonis also a quintessentially
American tale of the divide between South and North, a rift
manifested as early as the Revolutionary War, when Charleston, a
community of planters and traders with strong economic and
cultural ties to Britain, suffered for its Loyalist sympathies.
The injustices continued well into the Twentieth Century, when
early generations of American furniture scholars overlooked or
dismissed Southern furniture.
Armchair, one of a pair, Charleston or New York, 1790-1800.
Mahogany with ash and yellow pine. Due to their provenance in
the Ball family of Comingtee plantation and Charleston and the
use of yellow pine for open braces in the seat frames, this
chair has long been attributed to Charleston. Stylistically, it
is hard to distinguish from a New York chair of the same
pattern. MESDA.
"Charleston was always very misunderstood," observes Jim Pratt,
whose King Street shop in Charleston specializes in Southern
decor. "The city was advanced. It followed English designs
closely. Early scholars, who wrote from a Northern perspective,
didn't understand what was going on here. Consequently, much
locally made furniture was mislabeled as English."
As Rauschenberg relays in his fascinating introduction to volume
one of The Furniture of Charleston, the tide began to turn
in 1931 when Paul Burroughs published Southern Furniture.
The Magazine Antiquesfollowed with several thoughtful
articles in the 1930s on Charleston furniture. E. Milby Burton,
director of the Charleston Museum between 1932 and 1972, was
"...so damned tired of hearing the Boston crowd infer that there
was no silver or furniture making in the South..." that he dug
into the records, producing his landmark book,South Carolina
Silversmiths 1690-1860in 1942.
The gauntlet was thrown down in 1949, when Joseph Downs, curator
of the American Wing at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and later
of Winterthur Museum, uttered his infamous condemnation.
Addressing Colonial Williamsburg's Antiques Forum, he opined that
nothing of artistic merit was made south of Baltimore. With that,
the crusade to prove Downs and all other Yankee snobs wrong was
on, led by Burton and Frank Horton, whose pioneering efforts to
document and preserve Charleston furniture both enabled and
inspired Rauschenberg and Bivins.
Burton had a "military bearing, booming voice, strong
encompassing handshake and warm smile," recalls Rauschenberg, who
met the museum director in 1966, shortly after Rauschenberg went
to work for Frank Horton at Old Salem, the living history museum
that is home to the Museum of Early Southern Decorative Arts
(MESDA). Burton had answered Down's challenge by publishing, in
1955, the most expansive guide to date, Charleston Furniture,
1700-1825. The book remained the last word on the subject
until Horton and Rauschenberg started MESDA's field research
program in 1972.
Now 85, Frank Horton is in many minds synonymous with MESDA
itself. In 1961, Old Salem acquired a former Kroger grocery store
at the end of the village's Main Street and began remodeling it
to display, in what now consists of 24 period rooms and seven
galleries, the 229-object collection of Horton and his mother,
Theo Taliaferro, both former antiques dealers. Horton and
Taliaferro endowed MESDA with $400,000 in 1964; the institution
opened to the public a year later with Horton as its director, a
position he held until his retirement.
Horton and Rauschenberg spent their weekends in the late 1960s
visiting shops and private homes in search of building materials
for Old Salem and antiques for MESDA. Out of these rambles
developed MESDA's formalized field and documentary research
programs. As the operation grew, so did MESDA's holdings. Today
it houses 2,000 objects made by Southern artisans and maintains
files on 83,000 craftsmen. Many of the 23,000 objects recorded by
MESDA are in private collections.
A turning point in the study of Southern furniture occurred in
1953, when Winterthur advanced the use of microscopic wood
analysis in a museum setting. Rauschenberg, who had never been
north of the Mason-Dixon Line, visited Winterthur director
Charles Montgomery and his wood guru Gordon K. Saltar in 1966.
Saltar invited Rauschenberg to return to his lab at Winterthur as
an apprentice in early 1967. Soon Rauschenberg was breaking the
news to a disappointed Horton that ten pieces in MESDA's growing
collection were English, not Charleston, in origin.
Rauschenberg persevered with his research. By 1980, he had the
beginnings of a book; by 1991, a bibliography of primary sources
and 405 pages of known Charleston furniture forms. By 1994,
recognizing that his increasingly unwieldy trove might never be
published if he did not find a collaborator, Rauschenberg
enlisted his longtime colleague John Bivins, Jr, as his
co-author.
"We were all at MESDA over Thanksgiving weekend," Jim Pratt
recalls. "That Sunday, Brad and John sat down at MESDA's guest
house and worked out the whole deal. They went to Frank Horton
and got his blessing. They were Frank's boys and that was his
project. It would never have happened without Frank."
Bivins had served as director of restoration and curator for Old
Salem from 1968 to 1975. After heading MESDA's publication's
department from 1980 to 1990, he left the institution to become a
private consultant.
"The partnership of Rauschenberg and Bivins would showcase the
best of each man's talents: Rauschenberg's tenacious research
skills and mastery of microscopic wood analysis and Bivins'
encyclopedic knowledge of all American furniture forms and unique
insight into an artisan's approach to construction," writes Gary
Albert, Old Salem/MESDA's current director of publications. Over
the next decade, Bivins and his wife Anne McPherson were often on
the road, turning up rare Charleston examples in New York and New
England. Rauschenberg plowed the South.
"Frank kept saying, 'Write the book.' I kept saying, 'There's
more to do.' I was ready when I knew of no other piece of
Charleston furniture and had read every primary source I could
find," says Rauschenberg.
Bivins and Rauschenberg composed the first two volumes, roughly
divided into the Colonial and Neo-classical eras, together,
Bivins assimilating and distilling Rauschenberg's findings and
adding insights of his own. Volume III, an extraordinarily
detailed index of cabinetmakers that is cross-referenced both by
chronology and street address was Rauschenberg's accomplishment.
To Rauschenberg's regret, Bivins, a master carver himself, was
not able to complete a section on Charleston carving.
"I don't think anyone will undertake so comprehensive an
assignment again, but The Furniture of Charlestonis likely
to be a springboard to smaller projects," says Albert. As
outlined by Rauschenberg, areas inviting further inquiry include
the post-1820 period extending to the cusp of the "War of
Northern Aggression," as the author puts it; chronological
studies of the distribution of craftsmen within Charleston; and
inspection of Charleston-made frames and looking glasses.
Secretary with bookcase, 1812-20. Mahogany, cedrela and
mahogany and satinwood veneer with ash, mahogany and cedrela.
This piece bears the label of Robert Walker, one of
Charleston's most successful cabinetmakers between 1795 and
1833. MESDA.
"If I were 25 again, I'd do two things: study American bedsteads
and look at Southern 'plain style' furniture," Rauschenberg says
wistfully. Far from finished with his life's work, he is seeking
funds to publish a fourth volume, one on furniture, not
necessarily of local manufacture, in Charleston prior to 1820 and
the period terminology used to describe and market it.
"Our best years were those we spent in the field," recollects
Rauschenberg, ever eager to resume the hunt. "The people we met
were wonderful and we knew we were making important discoveries.
Charleston was one of the great furniture-making centers in the
country. Now the story can be told."
Many Hands Make Lighter Work
When Gary J. Albert assumed the post of publications director At
Old Salem/MESDA three years ago, his mandate included getting
into print.
"It was as big, complicated and expensive a book as I'd ever
seen. As John's illness progressed and Brad's retirement loomed,
finishing it became not just a personal priority, but an
institutional one," Albert recalls.
Dozens of individuals contributed in one way or another to this
massive undertaking. In addition to those already named, two
others deserve mention: Gavin Ashworth, the noted decorative arts
photographer who produced many of the book's color plates, and
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Curator Gerald W.R. Ward, who
reviewed the manuscript.
While many generous individuals contributed to the publication
costs, it is through Frank Horton's vision that the project came
to fruition. The volumes are the fourth works in the Horton
Series of Decorative Arts Monographs, an imprint perpetuated
through a revolving endowment.
The Furniture of Charleston retails for $325. Given that only
3,000 copies were printed, it is likely to be worth more in years
to come. The book may be ordered from MESDA by calling
800-822-5151 or visiting the museum's website at
www.oldsalem.org.
