Object Details
Set of Four Federal Inlaid Mahogany Shield-Back Side Chairs
ca. 1795
Federal Inlaid and Figured Mahogany Pembroke Table
ca. 1795
Federal Mahogany Two-Part Banquet Table
ca. 1795
Object Essay
These heart-back chairs are very similar in design to those with eagle inlays also in the Diplomatic Reception Rooms (Acc. Nos. 66.60 and 74.103), the principal difference being the substitution of a chain of inlaid bellflowers on the central splats of these chairs. They share such standard Baltimore features as the shaping of the backs and double-beaded edges. Rural Maryland and Virginia have also been suggested as the possible places of origin for these chairs because of their history, the use of southern yellow pine seat rails, the very stylized and unrefined quality of the leaf carving on the splats, and the unusual character of the bellflowers. Although the design of these inlays is related to the standard Baltimore examples, the ring at the top is enlarged and crude, the petals are more ovoid, and the central petals (particularly of the lowest bellflower) are not elongated and tapered.1The chairs in the set were given by the donors of this pair in memory of Mrs. Verna Tye Price, and in honor of Mrs. Ernest Alexander, Ms. Virginia Frances Price, and Mr. Richard J. Price. For a bellflower comparison, see Acc. Nos. 69.68, 73.5, and 66.61.1–.2. Presently covered in horsehair, a popular cover of the second half of the 18th century, these chairs are trimmed with two rows of nails following the original tacking pattern.
There are two slightly differing accounts of the history of these chairs, both pointing to their having belonged to President George Washington at Mount Vernon. One states that they were “sold at Mt. Vernon sale in 1860.” The other, originating with the family of the previous owner, Edward S. Moseley, is that they were sold by Martha Washington after the President’s death to his brother (incorrectly said to be “Augustus” or “Beauregard”) and were subsequently bought from him by Benjamin Perley Poore of Washington, D.C., who took them to his Massachusetts home, “Indian Hill.” The chairs then descended in Poore’s family to Moseley. Although George Washington’s brothers had died long before Poore’s time (1820–1887), the chairs may indeed at one time have been used at Mount Vernon.
Benjamin Perley Poore, a Washington newspaperman and one of the country’s first major collectors of antique furniture, specialized in pieces with important historical associations. He acquired other artifacts with Mount Vernon histories around 1860, and, as early as 1902, the heart-back chairs were published as George Washington’s.2Poore acquired spinning wheels with Mount Vernon histories from the neighborhood in 1860. They are now owned by the Mount Vernon Ladies Association of the Union (Morse 1902, 204–5). Morse says that the chairs, then at “Indian Hill,” “formed part of the set bought by Washington at Mt. Vernon, and were in use there at the time of his death.” It is difficult to connect them with Washington at Mount Vernon, however. The house was virtually empty in 1802 when George Washington’s nephew, Bushrod Washington (1767–1829), inherited it. The chairs would have been appropriate purchases in style and design after 1802 when Bushrod moved into Mount Vernon. In 1860 the President’s great-great nephew, John Augustine Washington III (d. 1861), sold the house to the Mount Vernon Ladies Association of the Union and presented them with the few presidential items that he had inherited.3Most pieces had been specifically bequeathed by George or Martha, or were sold at public and private sales following Martha’s death in 1802. Before 1860, he might have sold the chairs to Poore. It is remotely possible that the chairs had been in Mount Vernon during the President’s time and, after Martha Washington’s death, were sold to a relative or neighbor whose descendants sold them to Poore. However, there are no surviving George Washington accounts that match these chairs.4The only eligible chairs are those listed in Washington’s inventory “In the front Parlour . . . 11 [eleven] Mahogany chairs . . . $99.” These must be relatively new Federal chairs, since the elegant Philadelphia chairs made by Thomas Aiken in 1796 for Mount Vernon were valued at $10 each. No bills are known that correspond with these front parlor chairs.
Gregory R. Weidman
Excerpted from Clement E. Conger, et al. Treasures of State: Fine and Decorative Arts in the Diplomatic Reception Rooms of the U.S. Department of State. New York: H.N. Abrams, 1991.