AFA Winter 2017

large doors open, the rooms functioned as a long gallery across the second floor front of the house. The display of wealth and genteel status in the form of suspended costly textiles was a primary function of the room. At Stenton, visitors crossed through a pair of arched double doors, ascended a double-wide staircase with two landings, to enter yet another pair of double doors before arriving in the golden upholstered chamber. This dramatic processional climb to the yellow lodging room culminated at the foot of the curtained bed itself that dominated the space. A pair of original iron hooks in the ceiling indicated that the bed stood in the southwest corner of the room, in front of a window. The solid backboards of the bedstead concealed the window. Paint analysis determined that second generation paint color was absent from the window shutters behind the bed. The ceiling hooks offered primary evidence for the decision to build a flying tester bedstead, known as “angel beds” in England, and clues to the form it would take. The foot end of the tester frame, or “ceiling” over the bed, is suspended from the iron hooks with rope nearly hidden from view by the cornice. 4 By hanging the tester from the room’s ceiling structure, removing the need for foot posts, the open bed offers a stage-like platform (Fig. 2). Upholstered flying tester bedsteads did not often survive once out of fashion or decayed, as there was no elegant or costly wood to save. They were also difficult to resituate, and a wool upholstery such as at Stenton would become worn and moth-eaten. The bed frame, backboards, and tester cornice were constructed from soft secondary woods and took their elegant character from the form of the molding, the textile upholstery, and the degree to which they were further ornamented with decorative tapes, braids, tassels, fringes, and other trimmings. There is a playfulness in solid architectural wood forms encased in textiles, giving rigidity to a material that usually billows and drapes. The Stenton yellow bedstead was not highly elaborate when compared with those of the English nobility, but in a colonial context it was grand indeed. 5 Commissioning the Textiles A desire to furnish in the current project with true woven “worsted damask,” as described in the Logan inventories led to a design previously commissioned by the Philadelphia Museum of Art, which copied the textile depicted on the wall in Arthur Devis’ 1752 portrait of Lady Juliana Fermor Penn (Fig. 3); it was ordered from Context Weavers in Lancashire, England. The handwoven wool and silk diamond-design trim from Thistle Hill Weavers in Cherry Hill, New York, was used to define edges and cover seams and selvedges on the upholstered wood (Fig. 4). Red and gold were a popular color combination for beds and trim in the first half of the eighteenth century, and the yellow bed with the red trim in the Uppark Baby House, in Sussex, England, reinforced the choice of a predominantly red with gold trimming tape (Fig. 5). 6 Winter 114 www.afamag.com | w ww.incollect.com 1 Maple Chest of Drawers & Table 7 -- -- 2 Sconce Glasses w[i]th Brass Arms 10 -- -- 1 old Tea Table w[i]th a Broken Set of China 1 7 6 At a total cost of £ 66.2.6, the yellow lodging room was the second most expensively furnished room in the house, after the parlor. Its Function? Arriving in Pennsylvania in 1699 as William Penn’s secretary, Quaker merchant James Logan held many public offices over the course of his career, including acting governor in the 1730s. While Stenton served as a de facto governor’s mansion, the yellow lodging room likely functioned as a place to house distinguished guests for the night, and may have served as a withdrawing room, as was typical of the period, evidenced by the tea table and china, although “old” and “Broken” by 1752. Perhaps the room provided space for ladies to gather; while men may have done the same in the adjacent blue lodging room, which housed the library, on the other side of a tripartite door that adjoins both rooms. 3 With the Fig. 2: Re-created yellow worsted damask flying tester bedstead. The design copied a surviving cornice and looked to bedsteads in England for its overall form. The valance shapes were derived from the undulations of the cornice.