Pedestal. Walnut, bronze, patinated metal, gilding, paint, circa 1870. Kilian Brothers (active 1856 to circa 1920), New York City. The pedestal is exemplary of the workmanship and stylistic approach of the Kilian Brothers firm, which manufactured high-style, yet affordable, goods that suited the aesthetic sensibilities of a middle-class clientele.

 

Masterpieces of American Furniture

from The Munson Williams Proctor Institute

By Laura Beach

UTICA, N.Y. - "It can be challenging to take high style Nineteenth Century furniture and make it accessible to a broad audience," confesses Anna Tobin D'Ambrosio. This summer, to the curator's satisfaction, the Phillip Johnson-designed galleries of the Munson-Williams-Proctor Institute have been filled with visitors. Scholars, likewise, are now more familiar with a substantial but little known collection.

On view in Utica until October 31, "Masterpieces of American Furniture From The Munson-Williams-Proctor Institute" contains 65 pieces culled from a collection started by several generations of the Williams and Proctor families. Originally furnished with pieces by Charles Baudouine, Herter Brothers, Leon Marcotte and Pottier & Stymus, their 1850s home, Fountain Elms, opened to the public in 1960. In the past two decades, the collection has been expanded to include distinctive designs from the last decades of the Nineteenth Century.

D'Ambrosio has been the museum's curator of decorative arts since 1989. With a graduate degree from the Museum Studies Program in Cooperstown, N.Y., she began work on "Masterpieces" about four years ago. Winterthur awarded her a research fellowship in 1996.

"Portions of the furniture collection had been published in collected works, but nothing comprehensive had been done to it," she explains. "So much had been added in the 1980s and 1990s that we wanted to publish the material. We also wanted to feature updated research."

D'Ambrosio enlisted the help of top furniture scholars. Kenneth L. Ames, Donald Scott Bell, Michael K. Brown, Ed Polk Douglas, Donald L. Fennimore, Jerry V. Grant, Katherine C. Grier, Barry R. Harwood, Judith H. Hull, Jack L. Lindsey, Robert D. Mussey, Jr, Donald C. Peirce, Jodi A. Pollack, Timothy D. Rieman, Page Talbott, Charles L. Venable, Catherine Hoover Voorsanger, Gerald W.R. Ward, Janet Zapata and Philip Zea wrote the 55 entries in the accompanying catalogue, Masterpieces Of American Furniture From The Munson-Williams-Proctor Institute. Gerald W.R. Ward, The Carolyn and Peter Lynch Associate Curator of American Decorative Arts and Sculpture at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, reviewed the essays; his wife, Barbara McLean Ward, served as manuscript and copy editor.

In her preface, D'Ambrosio acknowledges the contributions of many other art historians, collectors and dealers - among them Alex Brammer, W. Scott Braznell, Margaret Caldwell, Mary de Juli, Peter Hill, Margot Johnson, Jon King, Hyman Meyers, Peggy Tuck Sinko and Priscilla St Germain. Special thanks, however, were reserved for Barry R. Harwood of the Brooklyn Museum of Art and Catherine Hoover Voorsanger of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, two in the forefront of this field.

The specialists offer fresh insights into the workings of many shops, particularly those of Charles Baudouine, Edward Hutchings, A. Kimbel and J. Cabus, and Alexander Roux. The firms of R.J. Horner & Co., Kilian Brothers, J.& J. W. Meeks, M. & H. Schrenkeisen, and Kilborn Whitman & Co. are extensively documented.

Published for the first time is a circa 1875-85 worktable richly inlaid with brass, pewter or lead, mother of pearl, and glass. Though its maker is unknown, the gracefully proportioned stand is on par with the best labeled furniture of its era. The hardware, notes D'Ambrosio, is identical to that found on furnishings from a house purchased by John D. Rockefeller, Sr, in 1881.

A circa 1876 desk by Kimbel & Cabus is in the Modern Gothic style, introduced by the New York cabinetmaker at the 1876 Philadelphia Centennial. Though not marked, it is documented by a photograph of a nearly identical desk. The photo descended in the family of Arthur Kimbel.

Some other discoveries include a circa 1880 side chair attributed to Kilborn, Whitman & Company of Boston. An armchair once thought to be by Jelliff has been reattributed to M & H Schrenkeisen of New York, circa 1870-75. One lively entry is a brass stand with ceramic decoration. It appeared on the back cover of a Bradley & Hubbard catalogue of 1880 and was acquired by the Munson-Williams-Proctor Institute in 1966 from Manhattan dealer Margaret Caldwell.

Fabricated of dazzling silverplate, a tilt-top table designed by Frank Shaw for Tiffany & Company made headlines when it was knocked down to Margot Johnson, a New York City dealer, at Sotheby's January Americana sales in 1993. Also in print for the first time is a circa 1845 games table stamped J and JW Meeks, New York. Research on the piece was conducted by Jodi Pollack, who notes the diversified line of a Meeks workshop. It spanned three generations and at its height is believed to have employed more than 125 people.

D'Ambrosio's inquiry also turned up new information on pieces long in the MWPI's collection. An inlaid, serpentine-sided Federal card table thought to be from New York now appears to have been made in Boston. The case for reattribution is persuasively argued by Gerald Ward.

Inside a drawer of a handsome Quervelle secretary bookcase is a paper label printed with the cabinetmaker's Philadelphia address. Forced to choose, the curator says this is her favorite piece. Recently uncovered at the Philadelphia Museum of Art is a sketch attributed to Quervelle, illustrating a casepiece very much like the one currently on display.

Cluster columns, arches and tracery combine in an elaborate etagere from a home in Cazenovia, N.Y. Ranking among the finest examples of American Gothic furniture ever made, the server was acquired by the museum after D'Ambrosio received a call from its owner. `Do you ever buy period rooms? Can you come over and see?" asked the gentleman charged with selling Century House. Two folk portraits from the same home are now at the New York Historical Association in Cooperstown, where they are part of "Empire State Mosaic: The Folk Art Of New York State."

Two high style Neo-Greco cabinets - one anonymous, the other by Alexander Roux - suggest the preeminence of French style in New York in the 1860s. A circa 1880 Turkish parlor chair with its original black silk and yellow needlework upholstery is a rare survival.

Not every object was as well preserved as the Turkish chair. "Many received minimal conservation - repairs for minor losses, cleaning, that sort of thing," D'Ambrosio explains. She worked with textiles specialist Rabbit Goody to replicate the luscious silk upholstery on a tufted Renaissance Revival armchair whose cover was worn to shreds. An Eastlake style side chair retaining just a scrap of its original upholstery was also re-covered, with an 1890s fabric acquired from a specialist.

Organized into four areas covering Neoclasical, Revival, Reform and Innovative design, "Masterpieces" occupies the second floor of the MWPI's Museum of Art. "Many pieces were taken out of the period rooms in Fountain Elms. What's great is that people can see these works anew," the curator notes.

Withheld from the exhibition but included in its catalogue is a carved and painted cabinet of circa 1870. "We haven't had the funding to conserve it, but we published it anyway in the hope that it would lead to further research," she says. Though from an extended group of imaginatively decorated casepieces, neither its maker and nor city of manufacture is known.

Observes Kenneth Ames, author of the entry, "What this cabinet may indicate most clearly is that knowledge of high style Nineteenth Century furniture is today where knowledge of Eighteenth Century furniture was in about 1920. We have a general sense of the terrain, but the specifics remain elusive."

D'Ambrosio and her sure-footed colleagues have made significant advances in mapping one of the last frontiers of decorative arts scholarship. "There are a lot of avenues of research that are still available," reflects the curator, who has already begun work on a show of Nineteenth Century metal furniture. Embracing everything from garden decor to the indoor novelties produced in Meriden, Conn., the show is set to open in 2003.

Masterpieces of American Furniture From The Munson-Williams-Proctor Institute can be purchased for $50 from the Institute's gift shop by telephoning 315/797-0000.

Funded by the Henry Luce Foundation and the J.M. Kaplan Fund, among others, "Masterpieces of American Furniture From The Munson-Williams-Proctor Institute" will travel to the Cincinnati Art Museum, where it will be on view from February 18 to May 28, 2000.

The Munson-Williams-Proctor Institute is at 310 Genesee Street in Utica, telephone 315/797-0000.