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Lot Essay
Gem-like in its crisp precision and virtually glistening as it cascades down the knees and across the front rail, the carved ornament on this card table comprises one of the greatest passages of American carving from the eighteenth century. Under the flickering light of a candlelit interior, the sparkling effect of the carver’s handiwork would have been even more evident, a testament to the talents of an undisputed master of his craft. Today, the carving’s survival in remarkable condition allows for the full appreciation of the richness and subtlety of the design and its masterful rendering by London-trained carver John Pollard (1740-1787). Illustrating Pollard’s work at the height of his Philadelphia career, this card table and ten en suite surviving forms made for the Deshler family represent one of the most important commissions of the era, second only in quantity to the large suite made around the same time for General John Cadwalader (1742-1786).
A re-examination of the design parallels and the history of the suite strongly indicate that it was made for David Deshler’s (1711-1792) daughter Esther (1740-1787) around the time of her marriage in 1769. While the suite has been dated as late as 1775, a number of details of the suite’s ornamental vocabulary were also used by Pollard in his contributions to the renowned Cadwalader commissions of the late 1760s and it is likely that both suites were made within a short time of each other. The related Cadwalader forms include the celebrated slab-top table now at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (fig. 3), most recently dated 1765-1770. Like the Deshler suite, it has knees centered by an opposing C-scroll motif with attendant foliage. Furthermore, the rails bear a series of interplaying C-scrolls embellished across their arcs with a rocaille trim, passages that echo the upper edges of the knees and the central C-scroll design on the skirt of the Deshler card tables (that offered here and its mate at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, fig. 2). Finally, the Cadwalader table makes extensive use of raised cabochons set within leafy clusters, a combination replicated on the ears of the side chairs from the Deshler suite (see lot 173, fig. 1).
Additional parallels are seen in the Cadwalader commode-seat hairy-paw side chairs made in circa 1769 and also carved by Pollard (see lot 173, fig. 4). They too employ an opposing C-scroll design to organize the ornament on the knees (fig. 6) and while this carving was probably executed by another hand, it was undoubtedly overseen by Pollard, who carved the chairs’ backs, crests and stiles. The central leafy cluster on the Cadwalder chairs’ splats is centered by a single, flaring leaf with lobed tip and a virtually identical element runs through the middle of the cluster in the lower splat of the Deshler suite (see lot 173, fig. 3). Furthermore, the same leafy cluster on the Cadwalader suite has a pendant arrangement of two short leaves, placed atop each other and scrolling in opposite directions. This device was also used by Pollard on the Deshler chairs—below the central carving on the crest and as the finishing component of the ornament on each ear.
Many of these carved details appear to have been inspired by the designs of London carver Thomas Johnson (1723-1799). Pollard’s fellow carver, Hercules Courtenay (c. 1744-1784), is known to have trained under Johnson and as both carvers were later employed by cabinetmaker Benjamin Randolph (1737-1791/2) in Philadelphia, it is very possible that Pollard was trained by the same master. He may also have owned a copy of one of Johnson’s published designs. In his decoration of the Deshler suite, Pollard drew heavily from a ceiling design, plate 11 of Johnson’s One Hundred and Fifty New Designs (London, 1761). With opposing C-scrolls, C-scrolls with rocaille trim, a leaf cluster headed by a bellflower, leaves with a single loop and pendant bellflowers, this one plate illustrates the majority of the ornament on the Deshler suite (figs. 1, 4; lot 173, fig. 2).
Other parallels with work attributed to Pollard support a circa 1769-1770 date for the Deshler suite. As recently noted by Beckerdite, the passage embellishing the ears of the Deshler chairs is closely related to the banner carving in a side plate from a six-plate stove from Batsto Furnace in Burlington County, New Jersey. Pollard was the main carver for the furnace’s commissions and with a date of 1770, the plate was cast from a mold carved at this time. Pollard’s hand is also seen in the casting of a chimney back from the same furnace and as seen along the bottom, it features the opposing C-scrolls and C-scrolls with rocaille trim seen on the knees of the Deshler suite and the front rail of the Deshler card tables (fig. 8) (Luke Beckerdite, “Pattern Carving in Eighteenth-Century Philadelphia,” American Furniture 2014, Luke Beckerdite, ed. (Milwaukee, 2014), pp. 126-129, figs. 86, 88-90).
Recent research into the histories of the known survivals of the suite and this card table in particular indicates that the entire suite was in all likelihood made for Esther Deshler and as she married in 1769, supports the probability that it was made in this year or very soon thereafter. The Deshler suite is known today by eleven examples (listed below) and while a single side chair is noted to have simply descended from David Deshler, the remaining ten pieces can all be linked more specifically to Esther’s descendants or heirs. Previously, the card table offered here was thought to have descended from Esther’s sister Catharine (1752-1837) and as the family chart in fig. 9 illustrates, it was later owned by Edmund Herbert McCullough (1849-1910), Catharine’s great grandson. However, Edmund married his third cousin—his first wife, Hannah Logan Drinker (1850-1900), was a great granddaughter of Esther. As the other card table (fig. 2), seven of the eight side chairs and the easy chair from the suite all definitively passed through Esther’s lines, it is highly likely that the card table offered here did as well. Also, it has been argued that the suite was made to furnish David Deshler’s Germantown house, which was remodelled in 1772-1773. While this is possible, it makes for a more implausible scenario for the dispersal of the suite as Esther pre-deceased her father. If first owned by David Deshler, the entire suite would have had to have somehow passed to Esther before her demise or been acquired by her widower, John Morton (c.1739-1828), from his former father-in-law’s estate. At this time, circa 1792, Morton was about to marry secondly Mary Robinson (1757-1829) of Newport and as a prominent figure of substantial means, it is likely that if making large purchases of furniture at this time, he would have sought more stylish goods in the Federal style.
The circa 1769-1770 date for the Deshler suite is of particular importance as it makes it highly likely that the suite was made in the cabinet shop of Benjamin Randolph. Previously known in the field as “the Deshler carver,” John Pollard was identified by Luke Beckerdite and Alan Miller who ascertained that numerous forms with carving by the same hand were made in or attributed to the shop of Benjamin Randolph and by the process of elimination, determined that Pollard was their carver. As mentioned above, both he and Hercules Courtenay were employed by Randolph. After Courtenay left Randolph’s shop in the summer of 1769 and before Pollard set up his own business in 1773, Pollard was the principal carver in Randolph’s shop and thus most likely responsible for it's significant commissions during these years. Thus, the Cadwalader commode-seat side chairs and the Cadwalader marble-top table are ascribed to Randolph’s shop and a turret-top card table labelled by Randolph bearing Pollard’s carved ornament (fig. 7) similar to that on the Deshler suite further documents this close working relationship. The same reasoning can be applied to the Deshler suite: If made circa 1769-1770 and carved by Pollard, the suite was most likely produced in Randolph’s shop (for a full discussion of these attributions see Leroy Graves and Luke Beckerdite, “New Insights on John Cadwalader’s Commode-Seat Side Chairs,” American Furniture 2000, Luke Beckerdite, ed. (Milwaukee, 2000), pp. 154-160; Andrew Brunk, “Benjamin Randolph Revisited,” American Furniture 2007, Luke Beckerdite, ed. (Milwaukee, 2007), passim; for more on Pollard and Courtenay, see Beatrice B. Garvan, entries, Philadelphia: Three Centuries of American Art (Philadelphia, 1976), pp. 111-114; Christie’s, New York, 28 September 2011, lot 13 and 24 January 2014, lot 107).
THE DESHLER FAMILY OF PHILADELPHIA
While probably made for Esther, the Deshler suite was almost certainly commissioned by her father as indicated by partial or full inscriptions reading Deshler on several of the suite’s side chairs. David Deshler was born into a prominent family in Baden, Germany and like his uncles John Wister (1708-1789) and glass-maker Caspar Wistar (1696-1752), he immigrated to Pennsylvania where he attained considerable wealth. Upon his arrival in 1733, Deshler worked in John’s shop on Market Street, but soon prospered in his own right through various enterprises including selling hardware, importing goods from East India and serving as a private banker. He purchased two lots on Market Street between 2nd and 3rd Streets where he operated his own store and built an elegant house. In 1739, he married Mary Lefevre (1715-1774), of Huguenot descent, and after their marriage, both became Quakers.
Of the couple’s children, only three—all girls—survived childhood and Esther, the eldest, married John Morton. A Quaker born in Ireland, Morton arrived in Philadelphia in about 1750 along with his brother Samuel (1730-1773) and the two prospered through the trade of Irish linens. In 1758, Samuel married Phebe Lewis (1738-1812), whose brother Ellis (1734-1776) married David Deshler's daughter Mary (1741-1794) five years later. Thus, by the time Samuel and John wrote "our JM [John Morton] has this Day made his first Essay towards Matrimony with Esther Dethler [sic]" in 1769, the families were already well connected (Letter, Samuel and John Morton to Thomas Greer, 30 September 1769, Public Record Office, Northern Ireland, document ID 0709052, available at ied.dippam.ac.uk/records). Like his father-in-law, Morton became one of the leading figures in Philadelphia. He was a member of the Philadelphia Common Council, a director of the Hand-in-Hand Fire Insurance Company, and director then President of the Bank of North America. After Esther's death in 1787, Morton married secondly, in 1793, Mary Robinson, the daughter of Thomas Robinson (1731-1817), 'Quaker Tom,' of Newport. By the 1790s, he resided at 116 Front Street and as recorded in tax lists, was a "gentleman" merchant. Upon his death in 1828, his estate was valued at over $25,000, including $1400 worth of household furniture (Kerby A. Miller, ed., "John Morton," Irish Immigrants in the Land of Canaan: Letters and Memoirs from Colonial and Revolutionary America, 1675-1815 (New York, 2003), pp. 521-530; James Henry Lea and George Henry Lea, The Ancestry and Posterity of John Lea (Philadelphia, 1906), p. 92). As mentioned above, the table appears to have descended to John and Esther’s great granddaughter, Hannah Logan Drinker and after her death in 1900, to her widower, Edmund Herbert McCullough. As noted at the time of its sale in 1991, the table was consigned by the estate of a niece of Edmund Herbert McCullough’s second wife, née Ethel Newbold (1876-1953).
Known by eleven surviving forms, furniture from the Deshler suite comprises the card table offered here and a pair of side chairs in the following two lots; a privately owned side chair numbered II formerly in the Chipstone Collection (sold, Christie’s, New York, 18 October 1986, lot 512 and 24 January 2014, lot 107); four side chairs at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, numbered I, III, VI and VII (illustrated in Hornor, pl. 238); a single side chair illustrated in Israel Sack, Inc., American Antiques from Israel Sack, vol. VI, p. 48, P3920); an easy chair now in the Dietrich American Collection and on loan to the Philadelphia Museum of Art (illustrated in Hornor, pl. 237 and sold, Christie's, New York, 4 June 1988, lot 227); the card table in fig. 2 at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, acc. no. 1982-27-1 (illustrated in Hornor, pl. 236). Other furniture made for the family includes a high chest by Thomas Affleck made for the 1775 marriage of Catharine Deshler (now at Colonial Williamsburg Foundation) and a tea table with carving possibly by Richard Butts, Pollard's partner in 1773 (sold Sotheby's, New York, 28-31 January 1994, lot 1295).
A re-examination of the design parallels and the history of the suite strongly indicate that it was made for David Deshler’s (1711-1792) daughter Esther (1740-1787) around the time of her marriage in 1769. While the suite has been dated as late as 1775, a number of details of the suite’s ornamental vocabulary were also used by Pollard in his contributions to the renowned Cadwalader commissions of the late 1760s and it is likely that both suites were made within a short time of each other. The related Cadwalader forms include the celebrated slab-top table now at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (fig. 3), most recently dated 1765-1770. Like the Deshler suite, it has knees centered by an opposing C-scroll motif with attendant foliage. Furthermore, the rails bear a series of interplaying C-scrolls embellished across their arcs with a rocaille trim, passages that echo the upper edges of the knees and the central C-scroll design on the skirt of the Deshler card tables (that offered here and its mate at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, fig. 2). Finally, the Cadwalader table makes extensive use of raised cabochons set within leafy clusters, a combination replicated on the ears of the side chairs from the Deshler suite (see lot 173, fig. 1).
Additional parallels are seen in the Cadwalader commode-seat hairy-paw side chairs made in circa 1769 and also carved by Pollard (see lot 173, fig. 4). They too employ an opposing C-scroll design to organize the ornament on the knees (fig. 6) and while this carving was probably executed by another hand, it was undoubtedly overseen by Pollard, who carved the chairs’ backs, crests and stiles. The central leafy cluster on the Cadwalder chairs’ splats is centered by a single, flaring leaf with lobed tip and a virtually identical element runs through the middle of the cluster in the lower splat of the Deshler suite (see lot 173, fig. 3). Furthermore, the same leafy cluster on the Cadwalader suite has a pendant arrangement of two short leaves, placed atop each other and scrolling in opposite directions. This device was also used by Pollard on the Deshler chairs—below the central carving on the crest and as the finishing component of the ornament on each ear.
Many of these carved details appear to have been inspired by the designs of London carver Thomas Johnson (1723-1799). Pollard’s fellow carver, Hercules Courtenay (c. 1744-1784), is known to have trained under Johnson and as both carvers were later employed by cabinetmaker Benjamin Randolph (1737-1791/2) in Philadelphia, it is very possible that Pollard was trained by the same master. He may also have owned a copy of one of Johnson’s published designs. In his decoration of the Deshler suite, Pollard drew heavily from a ceiling design, plate 11 of Johnson’s One Hundred and Fifty New Designs (London, 1761). With opposing C-scrolls, C-scrolls with rocaille trim, a leaf cluster headed by a bellflower, leaves with a single loop and pendant bellflowers, this one plate illustrates the majority of the ornament on the Deshler suite (figs. 1, 4; lot 173, fig. 2).
Other parallels with work attributed to Pollard support a circa 1769-1770 date for the Deshler suite. As recently noted by Beckerdite, the passage embellishing the ears of the Deshler chairs is closely related to the banner carving in a side plate from a six-plate stove from Batsto Furnace in Burlington County, New Jersey. Pollard was the main carver for the furnace’s commissions and with a date of 1770, the plate was cast from a mold carved at this time. Pollard’s hand is also seen in the casting of a chimney back from the same furnace and as seen along the bottom, it features the opposing C-scrolls and C-scrolls with rocaille trim seen on the knees of the Deshler suite and the front rail of the Deshler card tables (fig. 8) (Luke Beckerdite, “Pattern Carving in Eighteenth-Century Philadelphia,” American Furniture 2014, Luke Beckerdite, ed. (Milwaukee, 2014), pp. 126-129, figs. 86, 88-90).
Recent research into the histories of the known survivals of the suite and this card table in particular indicates that the entire suite was in all likelihood made for Esther Deshler and as she married in 1769, supports the probability that it was made in this year or very soon thereafter. The Deshler suite is known today by eleven examples (listed below) and while a single side chair is noted to have simply descended from David Deshler, the remaining ten pieces can all be linked more specifically to Esther’s descendants or heirs. Previously, the card table offered here was thought to have descended from Esther’s sister Catharine (1752-1837) and as the family chart in fig. 9 illustrates, it was later owned by Edmund Herbert McCullough (1849-1910), Catharine’s great grandson. However, Edmund married his third cousin—his first wife, Hannah Logan Drinker (1850-1900), was a great granddaughter of Esther. As the other card table (fig. 2), seven of the eight side chairs and the easy chair from the suite all definitively passed through Esther’s lines, it is highly likely that the card table offered here did as well. Also, it has been argued that the suite was made to furnish David Deshler’s Germantown house, which was remodelled in 1772-1773. While this is possible, it makes for a more implausible scenario for the dispersal of the suite as Esther pre-deceased her father. If first owned by David Deshler, the entire suite would have had to have somehow passed to Esther before her demise or been acquired by her widower, John Morton (c.1739-1828), from his former father-in-law’s estate. At this time, circa 1792, Morton was about to marry secondly Mary Robinson (1757-1829) of Newport and as a prominent figure of substantial means, it is likely that if making large purchases of furniture at this time, he would have sought more stylish goods in the Federal style.
The circa 1769-1770 date for the Deshler suite is of particular importance as it makes it highly likely that the suite was made in the cabinet shop of Benjamin Randolph. Previously known in the field as “the Deshler carver,” John Pollard was identified by Luke Beckerdite and Alan Miller who ascertained that numerous forms with carving by the same hand were made in or attributed to the shop of Benjamin Randolph and by the process of elimination, determined that Pollard was their carver. As mentioned above, both he and Hercules Courtenay were employed by Randolph. After Courtenay left Randolph’s shop in the summer of 1769 and before Pollard set up his own business in 1773, Pollard was the principal carver in Randolph’s shop and thus most likely responsible for it's significant commissions during these years. Thus, the Cadwalader commode-seat side chairs and the Cadwalader marble-top table are ascribed to Randolph’s shop and a turret-top card table labelled by Randolph bearing Pollard’s carved ornament (fig. 7) similar to that on the Deshler suite further documents this close working relationship. The same reasoning can be applied to the Deshler suite: If made circa 1769-1770 and carved by Pollard, the suite was most likely produced in Randolph’s shop (for a full discussion of these attributions see Leroy Graves and Luke Beckerdite, “New Insights on John Cadwalader’s Commode-Seat Side Chairs,” American Furniture 2000, Luke Beckerdite, ed. (Milwaukee, 2000), pp. 154-160; Andrew Brunk, “Benjamin Randolph Revisited,” American Furniture 2007, Luke Beckerdite, ed. (Milwaukee, 2007), passim; for more on Pollard and Courtenay, see Beatrice B. Garvan, entries, Philadelphia: Three Centuries of American Art (Philadelphia, 1976), pp. 111-114; Christie’s, New York, 28 September 2011, lot 13 and 24 January 2014, lot 107).
THE DESHLER FAMILY OF PHILADELPHIA
While probably made for Esther, the Deshler suite was almost certainly commissioned by her father as indicated by partial or full inscriptions reading Deshler on several of the suite’s side chairs. David Deshler was born into a prominent family in Baden, Germany and like his uncles John Wister (1708-1789) and glass-maker Caspar Wistar (1696-1752), he immigrated to Pennsylvania where he attained considerable wealth. Upon his arrival in 1733, Deshler worked in John’s shop on Market Street, but soon prospered in his own right through various enterprises including selling hardware, importing goods from East India and serving as a private banker. He purchased two lots on Market Street between 2nd and 3rd Streets where he operated his own store and built an elegant house. In 1739, he married Mary Lefevre (1715-1774), of Huguenot descent, and after their marriage, both became Quakers.
Of the couple’s children, only three—all girls—survived childhood and Esther, the eldest, married John Morton. A Quaker born in Ireland, Morton arrived in Philadelphia in about 1750 along with his brother Samuel (1730-1773) and the two prospered through the trade of Irish linens. In 1758, Samuel married Phebe Lewis (1738-1812), whose brother Ellis (1734-1776) married David Deshler's daughter Mary (1741-1794) five years later. Thus, by the time Samuel and John wrote "our JM [John Morton] has this Day made his first Essay towards Matrimony with Esther Dethler [sic]" in 1769, the families were already well connected (Letter, Samuel and John Morton to Thomas Greer, 30 September 1769, Public Record Office, Northern Ireland, document ID 0709052, available at ied.dippam.ac.uk/records). Like his father-in-law, Morton became one of the leading figures in Philadelphia. He was a member of the Philadelphia Common Council, a director of the Hand-in-Hand Fire Insurance Company, and director then President of the Bank of North America. After Esther's death in 1787, Morton married secondly, in 1793, Mary Robinson, the daughter of Thomas Robinson (1731-1817), 'Quaker Tom,' of Newport. By the 1790s, he resided at 116 Front Street and as recorded in tax lists, was a "gentleman" merchant. Upon his death in 1828, his estate was valued at over $25,000, including $1400 worth of household furniture (Kerby A. Miller, ed., "John Morton," Irish Immigrants in the Land of Canaan: Letters and Memoirs from Colonial and Revolutionary America, 1675-1815 (New York, 2003), pp. 521-530; James Henry Lea and George Henry Lea, The Ancestry and Posterity of John Lea (Philadelphia, 1906), p. 92). As mentioned above, the table appears to have descended to John and Esther’s great granddaughter, Hannah Logan Drinker and after her death in 1900, to her widower, Edmund Herbert McCullough. As noted at the time of its sale in 1991, the table was consigned by the estate of a niece of Edmund Herbert McCullough’s second wife, née Ethel Newbold (1876-1953).
Known by eleven surviving forms, furniture from the Deshler suite comprises the card table offered here and a pair of side chairs in the following two lots; a privately owned side chair numbered II formerly in the Chipstone Collection (sold, Christie’s, New York, 18 October 1986, lot 512 and 24 January 2014, lot 107); four side chairs at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, numbered I, III, VI and VII (illustrated in Hornor, pl. 238); a single side chair illustrated in Israel Sack, Inc., American Antiques from Israel Sack, vol. VI, p. 48, P3920); an easy chair now in the Dietrich American Collection and on loan to the Philadelphia Museum of Art (illustrated in Hornor, pl. 237 and sold, Christie's, New York, 4 June 1988, lot 227); the card table in fig. 2 at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, acc. no. 1982-27-1 (illustrated in Hornor, pl. 236). Other furniture made for the family includes a high chest by Thomas Affleck made for the 1775 marriage of Catharine Deshler (now at Colonial Williamsburg Foundation) and a tea table with carving possibly by Richard Butts, Pollard's partner in 1773 (sold Sotheby's, New York, 28-31 January 1994, lot 1295).