Lot Essay
This French bedstead descended in the family of Luman Reed and may be the "1 French bedstead" or one of the two "bedstead (s)" in the second floor front bedrooms listed in the 1836 inventory of Reed's house on 13 Greenwich Street. Reed paid Phfye $910.00 for furniture in 1833, probably in payment for furnishing Reed's new house. As this bedstead dates before 1833, the payment may include earlier accounts for furniture or indicate that Reed was a longstanding patron of Phyfe's work. The association of this bedstead to Phyfe is further substantiated by the existence of a nearly idential bedstead which Phyfe made for the merchant, Montgomery Livingston. In 1813, Phyfe billed Livingston for a "Bedstead..$25" as well as for "Taking Down and Putting up [the] Bedstead...$0.38" both of which were actually done in October of the previous year (see Tracy, Classical America (Newark, 1963), fig. 17).
The design source for sleigh beds originated in France. Pierre de la Mésangère published designs for the form over a period of several years in his, Meubles et Objets de Gout. Plate 156, pictured above, which dates to 1805, illustrates a very similar example as the bedstead on the right; both share the cylindrical headboard rails, brass mounts, carved animal feet and distinctive slanted side rails. Phyfe, however, made the bedstead a decade later than the design was first available, which illustrates a lapse in the acceptance by the American market of direct French designs.
The mounts used on the ends of the cylindrical rails, of a Greco-Roman head surrounded by laurel leaves, appear to be based upon plate 15 of Percier and Fontaine's 1804 designs, published together in 1812 as Recueil de Décorations Intérieures. Percier and Fontaine were the royal architect-designers for Napolean and are credited with introducing the French Empire style, the motifs of which relied heavily on elements from the Classical past. Appropriate to have French mounts on a French-style bedstead, Phyfe until his death; his 1854 shop inventory, for example, lists "1 lot of French Ornaments." The actual origin of the brasses, however, is impossible to determine since they were generically termed "French" in the period (Enninger, "With the Richest Ornaments Just Imported From France" (Master's thesis, University of Delaware, 1993, pp.63-64).
The design source for sleigh beds originated in France. Pierre de la Mésangère published designs for the form over a period of several years in his, Meubles et Objets de Gout. Plate 156, pictured above, which dates to 1805, illustrates a very similar example as the bedstead on the right; both share the cylindrical headboard rails, brass mounts, carved animal feet and distinctive slanted side rails. Phyfe, however, made the bedstead a decade later than the design was first available, which illustrates a lapse in the acceptance by the American market of direct French designs.
The mounts used on the ends of the cylindrical rails, of a Greco-Roman head surrounded by laurel leaves, appear to be based upon plate 15 of Percier and Fontaine's 1804 designs, published together in 1812 as Recueil de Décorations Intérieures. Percier and Fontaine were the royal architect-designers for Napolean and are credited with introducing the French Empire style, the motifs of which relied heavily on elements from the Classical past. Appropriate to have French mounts on a French-style bedstead, Phyfe until his death; his 1854 shop inventory, for example, lists "1 lot of French Ornaments." The actual origin of the brasses, however, is impossible to determine since they were generically termed "French" in the period (Enninger, "With the Richest Ornaments Just Imported From France" (Master's thesis, University of Delaware, 1993, pp.63-64).