AFA Winter 2017

Antiques & Fine Art 113 2017 What’s in A Name? The “maple bedroom,” a twentieth-century Colonial Revival concept, displayed maple furniture in a warmly decorated setting that complemented the distinctive pale-colored, lustrous, and often figured North American wood. 2 Current research at Stenton has revealed that this room was called the “Yellow Lodging Room,” an eighteenth-century golden colored and maple furnished bedchamber, an antecedent of the later “maple bedroom.” Stenton’s floor plan is a somewhat idiosyncratic variation on the typical gentleman’s house, two rooms wide and two rooms deep, with an entry passage and grand stair. Perhaps Stenton’s most striking feature is the second-floor pair of adjoining rooms across the front of the house, which offered expansive space for entertaining and sociability. As described in a 1752 estate inventory, the yellow lodging room contained a range of furnishings. The bedstead and window curtains accounted for almost half of the room’s value, with expensive imported wool damask displayed floor-to-ceiling at the bed, at the windows, and on the set of maple side chairs around the room: 1 Yellow Worsted Damask Bed w[i]th Curtains, Window Curtains & Bed Cloaths, &ra [etc]. £30 -- -- 12 Maple Chairs w[i]th Worsted Damask Bottoms 16 10 -- Old Brass Chimney Furniture w[i]th Shovel Tongs & Fender 1 5 -- Fig. 1: Stenton’s yellow lodging room, as it may have appeared in circa-1750. Replicated yellow ochre paint, re-created yellow wool damask textiles, and maple furniture combine to create a glowing warm golden chamber.