Philadelphia Antiques Show 2022

88 2 0 2 2 LOAN EXH I B I T 2005 VAULTING AMBITION Scholar-curators Robert F. Trent and H. Mack Truax II organized the 2005 loan exhibit “Vaulting Ambition: Philadelphia Gothic Revival Furniture and other Decorative Arts 1830-1860.” Dedicated to the late Peter L. L. Strickland, the dynamic presentation demonstrated the profound impact of Gothic architecture on the flowering of Gothic forms and iconography in the arts of mid-19th century Philadelphia. Gothic designs and motifs ebb and flow in Western art from the 12th century onwards with great latitude. The English cabinetmaker Thomas Chippendale entitled all three editions of his now-eponymous design book The Gentleman and Cabinet-Maker’s Director: Being a Large Collection of…Designs of Household Furniture in the Gothic, Chinese, and Modern Taste (1754, 1755, and 1763). Elements of fashionable mid- 18th century furniture and furnishings incorporated patterns whose roots were in Gothic tracery, such as the banisters (or splats) of chairs and the patterns of fretwork found throughout furnishings, decorative architecture, and lighting. Even while neoclassicism took center stage from the 1770s through the 1820s, interest in and elements of Gothic could still be found. Philadelphia’s embrace of the Gothic in the early 19th century had an important genesis with none other than “Mr. Neoclassical” himself, the British-born architect B. Henry Latrobe (1764-1820). Latrobe designed in 1799 a lovely Gothic country house called Sedgeley for the merchant William Cramond (1754-1843) and his wife Sarah Nixon Cramond (d.1865). Cramond suffered bankruptcy, and the house was occupied by James Cowles Fisher (1756-1840) and Ann (Nancy) Wharton Fisher (1770-1852) when the numerous paintings and prints of it and the surrounding parklands were made. They record its design well since only the stable of it survives today in East Fairmont Park. Literature promoted the Gothic style, as did ecclesiastical needs. Latrobe’s architectural protégées such as William Strickland, John Haviland, Robert Mills, Thomas Ustick Walter, John Notman, Samuel Sloan, Napoleon LeBrun, and John McArthur, Jr., followed their teacher’s ideology of promoting classical/Italianate design but peppering it with elements of Gothic style. O en the Gothic furniture and wares were reserved for the garden or library, .like Walter’s 1837 Gothic cottage at Andalusia, the Biddle family’s Delaware River estate. It was during the 1830 to 1860 period that significant amounts of furniture were being made in Philadelphia and exported to plantations in the American South, where landowner’s wealth soared through the work of enslaved workers who cultivated the cotton that was sold and created the immense profits for the merchants of New York, Philadelphia, and all cities in the northern U.S. as well as in Europe. Most famously, the shop of Crawford Riddell made and exported an entire Gothic suite of furniture for “Rosedown,” a St. Francisville, Louisiana, plantation. Trent and Truax acknowledged not only the numerous scholars who studied and published important research on the Gothic style, but also the later practitioners like Daniel Pabst and Frank Furness who worked in the so-called modern Gothic style. This 1880s lamp brass, glass, and wood lamp (now electrified) has Gothic design elements of a four-lobed flower or quatrefoil, fleur-de-lis and with a pierced crenellated gallery, foliate panels, and incised geometric details, many of which were celebrated in Anna Tobin d’Ambrosio’s The Brass Menagerie (Munson-Williams-Proctor Institute, Utica, NY). Its glass shade is peachblow, with a satin finish exterior that is cut to clear with floral designs. Gothic Lamp, c. 1880’s Brass, glass and wood, electrified, 21 inches Collection of John Whitenight and Fred LaValley