.jpg?w=1)
.jpg?w=1)
.jpg?w=1)
.jpg?w=1)
Lot Essay
The acme of artistic decoration.
-William MacPherson Hornor on the Deshler suite (Blue Book Philadelphia Furniture (1935), p. 211).
Designed and executed by a craftsman of extraordinary talents, this side chair stands as a stunning survival of colonial American artistry. The carved ornament shows exceptional depth and precision with all elements selectively placed to accentuate the underlying design of the form. Rarely equaled in eighteenth-century America, such masterful craftsmanship is believed to illustrate the work of John Pollard (1740-1787) while at the height of his career in Philadelphia.
Pollard very likely trained under London carver Thomas Johnson (1723-1799) and in about 1765 immigrated to Philadelphia where he was employed in the shop of cabinetmaker Benjamin Randolph (1737-1791/2). There, he worked alongside carver Hercules Courtenay (c. 1744-1784), who is known to have trained under Johnson. From August 1769, when Courtenay left Randolph’s shop, to 1773, when Pollard set up his own business, Pollard was Randolph’s principal carver. Like other furniture made during these years bearing Pollard’s carved ornament, this chair and other forms from the original suite may have been made in this shop. Another possibility is that the suite illustrates the work of cabinetmaker Thomas Tufft (1740-1788) perhaps in partnership with James Gillingham (1736-1781). The profile of the chair’s front rail is similar to those seen on a matching high chest and dressing table bearing Tufft’s label and two sets of chairs attributed to Gillingham.[i] This chair was made en suite with seven other side chairs, an easy chair and a pair of card tables that together comprise the renowned suite of furniture made for the Deshler family of Philadelphia (see below). Distinguished by its pristine condition, the chair offered here retains its original surface that displays the refined articulation of the ornament to its greatest effect.
A design for a ceiling by Thomas Johnson is a virtual blueprint for the Deshler suite and it is likely that Pollard had a copy on hand when he laid out the carved ornament on the chairs and tables (fig. 1).[ii] Details seen on both the ceiling design and this chair include the inverted leafy cluster headed by a bellflower, seen at the top center of the design and in carved form, on the lower center of the chair’s splat (fig. 2). Elsewhere on the ceiling design are opposing C-scrolls and pendant bellflowers—the leitmotif of the Deshler suite—seen on the knees of this chair and all other forms in the suite (fig. 3).
Design parallels to other examples of Pollard’s Philadelphia work indicate that the Deshler suite was made in about 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 furnishings made for John Cadwalader (1742-1786) of the late 1760s and it is likely that both commissions were made within a short time of each other. The inverted leafy clusters on the splats of the Deshler suite are akin to the upper central ornament on the Cadwalader commode-seat hairy-paw chairs’ splats—and both feature the delineation of a center leaf with lobed terminus, a detail also seen on Johnson’s design (figs. 4, 2). Though not carved by Pollard himself, but probably under his direction, the knees of the Cadwalader chairs feature the same basic layout, with the ornament centered by opposing C-scrolls with attendant leafage and bellflowers. The Cadwalader chairs and the Deshler suite also both illustrate a device favored by Pollard—a pendant arrangement of two short leaves, placed abutting each other and scrolling in opposite directions. It is seen under the leafy cluster on the splat of the Cadwalader chairs and below the ear and central crest ornament on the Deshler side chairs (fig. 5). Pollard also executed the magnificent carving on a marble-top table made for Cadwalader, whose passages feature numerous cabochons set within leafy clusters, a combination replicated on the ears of the side chairs from the Deshler suite (fig. 5, left).[iii]
Other similarities to work attributed to Pollard support a circa 1769 date for the Deshler suite. Represented by lots 496 and 497 in this sale, a set of chairs made for John Dickinson (1732-1808) displays closely related cabochon-carved ears and splats with leafy clusters and opposing scrolls seen in figures 2 and 5. The Dickinson set can be dated to circa 1770, the year Dickinson marked Mary Norris (1740-1803). As 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 1770 six-plate stove from Batsto Furnace in Burlington County, New Jersey. 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 seen on the knees of the Deshler suite.[iv]
THE DESHLER FAMILY OF PHILADELPHIA
The history of the suite further indicates that it was made for Esther Deshler (1740-1787), the eldest daughter of David Deshler (1711-1792). She married John Morton (c.1739-1828) on September 29, 1769 and the suite was most likely commissioned by her father around this time as a wedding gift. As seen on the chair offered here, as well as several others, the slip-seat frame bears the period inscription Deshler in black ink, no doubt to indicate the name of the customer. Of the eleven known survivals of the suite, ten were owned in the twentieth century by direct descendants of Esther (including a card table whose later owners were also descended from Esther’s sister Catherine) and the eleventh was simply noted to have descended from David Deshler. Since Esther pre-deceased her father, it seems that the suite was already owned by her heirs prior to his death.[v]
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 Wister’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 Second and Third 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.
In September 1769, the couple’s eldest daughter, Esther, married John Morton, a Quaker Irish émigré who prospered through the importation of linens. 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, Morton’s estate was valued at over $25,000, including $1400 worth of household furniture.[vi]
Along with the easy chair from the suite, this side chair descended to John and Mary Morton’s grandson, Benjamin Rapier Smith (1825-1904), most likely the writer of the B. Smith inscription on the side chair’s rear seat rail. Smith had also inherited the Thomas Robinson house in Newport, which he used as a summer retreat, and both the house and this chair descended to his daughter, Esther Morton Smith (1865-1942). As indicated by a loan number on the rear seat rail, this chair was loaned by Esther in 1924 to the Philadelphia Museum of Art, where it was displayed in the Museum’s first exhibition of Chippendale furniture. By the mid-twentieth century, the chair was in Newport when it was photographed in the Great Room in the Thomas Robinson house (fig. 6).
Known by eleven surviving forms, furniture from the Deshler suite comprises: The side chair offered here and an easy chair that descended in the same family line, sold Christie’s, New York, 4 June 1988, lot 227 (illustrated in Hornor, pl. 237); a pair of side chairs (numbered V and VIII) and a card table, sold, Christie’s, New York, Philadelphia Splendor: The Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Max R. Zaitz, 22 January 2016, lots 172-174; four side chairs (numbered I, III, VI and VII, one illustrated in Hornor, pl. 238) and the mate to the previous card table in the collections of the Philadelphia Museum of Art (illustrated in Hornor, pl. 236); a single side chair illustrated in Israel Sack, Inc., American Antiques from Israel Sack, vol. VI, p. 48, P3920.
[i] Luke Beckerdite, “Thomas Johnson, Hercules Courtenay, and the Dissemination of London Rococo Design,” American Furniture 2016, Luke Beckerdite, ed. (Milwaukee, 2016), pp. 23-61. 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. For the Tufft and Gillingham attributions, see Alexandra Alevizatos Kirtley, American Furniture 1650-1840, Highlights from the Philadelphia Museum of Art (Philadelphia, 2020), pp. 112-114, 116-117, nos. 76-82, 84-85.
[ii] Thomas Johnson, [Designs for] glass frames, ovals, stands for candles, etc. (London, 1758), plate 47; the same design published in Thomas Johnson, One Hundred and Fifty New Designs (London, 1761), plate 11.
[iii] See fn. i above. The marble-top table is in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, acc. no. 18.110.27a, b. For comparative illustrations of these cabochon motifs, see Brunk 2007, p. 31, fig. 46 and Beckerdite 2016, p. 51, figs. 52-55.
[iv] Luke Beckerdite, “Pattern Carving in Eighteenth-Century Philadelphia,” American Furniture 2014, Luke Beckerdite, ed. (Milwaukee, 2014), pp. 126-129, figs. 86, 88-90.
[v] See family chart, Christie’s, New York, Philadelphia Splendor: The Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Max R. Zaitz, January 22, 2016, p. 55.
[vi] 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.
-William MacPherson Hornor on the Deshler suite (Blue Book Philadelphia Furniture (1935), p. 211).
Designed and executed by a craftsman of extraordinary talents, this side chair stands as a stunning survival of colonial American artistry. The carved ornament shows exceptional depth and precision with all elements selectively placed to accentuate the underlying design of the form. Rarely equaled in eighteenth-century America, such masterful craftsmanship is believed to illustrate the work of John Pollard (1740-1787) while at the height of his career in Philadelphia.
Pollard very likely trained under London carver Thomas Johnson (1723-1799) and in about 1765 immigrated to Philadelphia where he was employed in the shop of cabinetmaker Benjamin Randolph (1737-1791/2). There, he worked alongside carver Hercules Courtenay (c. 1744-1784), who is known to have trained under Johnson. From August 1769, when Courtenay left Randolph’s shop, to 1773, when Pollard set up his own business, Pollard was Randolph’s principal carver. Like other furniture made during these years bearing Pollard’s carved ornament, this chair and other forms from the original suite may have been made in this shop. Another possibility is that the suite illustrates the work of cabinetmaker Thomas Tufft (1740-1788) perhaps in partnership with James Gillingham (1736-1781). The profile of the chair’s front rail is similar to those seen on a matching high chest and dressing table bearing Tufft’s label and two sets of chairs attributed to Gillingham.[i] This chair was made en suite with seven other side chairs, an easy chair and a pair of card tables that together comprise the renowned suite of furniture made for the Deshler family of Philadelphia (see below). Distinguished by its pristine condition, the chair offered here retains its original surface that displays the refined articulation of the ornament to its greatest effect.
A design for a ceiling by Thomas Johnson is a virtual blueprint for the Deshler suite and it is likely that Pollard had a copy on hand when he laid out the carved ornament on the chairs and tables (fig. 1).[ii] Details seen on both the ceiling design and this chair include the inverted leafy cluster headed by a bellflower, seen at the top center of the design and in carved form, on the lower center of the chair’s splat (fig. 2). Elsewhere on the ceiling design are opposing C-scrolls and pendant bellflowers—the leitmotif of the Deshler suite—seen on the knees of this chair and all other forms in the suite (fig. 3).
Design parallels to other examples of Pollard’s Philadelphia work indicate that the Deshler suite was made in about 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 furnishings made for John Cadwalader (1742-1786) of the late 1760s and it is likely that both commissions were made within a short time of each other. The inverted leafy clusters on the splats of the Deshler suite are akin to the upper central ornament on the Cadwalader commode-seat hairy-paw chairs’ splats—and both feature the delineation of a center leaf with lobed terminus, a detail also seen on Johnson’s design (figs. 4, 2). Though not carved by Pollard himself, but probably under his direction, the knees of the Cadwalader chairs feature the same basic layout, with the ornament centered by opposing C-scrolls with attendant leafage and bellflowers. The Cadwalader chairs and the Deshler suite also both illustrate a device favored by Pollard—a pendant arrangement of two short leaves, placed abutting each other and scrolling in opposite directions. It is seen under the leafy cluster on the splat of the Cadwalader chairs and below the ear and central crest ornament on the Deshler side chairs (fig. 5). Pollard also executed the magnificent carving on a marble-top table made for Cadwalader, whose passages feature numerous cabochons set within leafy clusters, a combination replicated on the ears of the side chairs from the Deshler suite (fig. 5, left).[iii]
Other similarities to work attributed to Pollard support a circa 1769 date for the Deshler suite. Represented by lots 496 and 497 in this sale, a set of chairs made for John Dickinson (1732-1808) displays closely related cabochon-carved ears and splats with leafy clusters and opposing scrolls seen in figures 2 and 5. The Dickinson set can be dated to circa 1770, the year Dickinson marked Mary Norris (1740-1803). As 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 1770 six-plate stove from Batsto Furnace in Burlington County, New Jersey. 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 seen on the knees of the Deshler suite.[iv]
THE DESHLER FAMILY OF PHILADELPHIA
The history of the suite further indicates that it was made for Esther Deshler (1740-1787), the eldest daughter of David Deshler (1711-1792). She married John Morton (c.1739-1828) on September 29, 1769 and the suite was most likely commissioned by her father around this time as a wedding gift. As seen on the chair offered here, as well as several others, the slip-seat frame bears the period inscription Deshler in black ink, no doubt to indicate the name of the customer. Of the eleven known survivals of the suite, ten were owned in the twentieth century by direct descendants of Esther (including a card table whose later owners were also descended from Esther’s sister Catherine) and the eleventh was simply noted to have descended from David Deshler. Since Esther pre-deceased her father, it seems that the suite was already owned by her heirs prior to his death.[v]
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 Wister’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 Second and Third 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.
In September 1769, the couple’s eldest daughter, Esther, married John Morton, a Quaker Irish émigré who prospered through the importation of linens. 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, Morton’s estate was valued at over $25,000, including $1400 worth of household furniture.[vi]
Along with the easy chair from the suite, this side chair descended to John and Mary Morton’s grandson, Benjamin Rapier Smith (1825-1904), most likely the writer of the B. Smith inscription on the side chair’s rear seat rail. Smith had also inherited the Thomas Robinson house in Newport, which he used as a summer retreat, and both the house and this chair descended to his daughter, Esther Morton Smith (1865-1942). As indicated by a loan number on the rear seat rail, this chair was loaned by Esther in 1924 to the Philadelphia Museum of Art, where it was displayed in the Museum’s first exhibition of Chippendale furniture. By the mid-twentieth century, the chair was in Newport when it was photographed in the Great Room in the Thomas Robinson house (fig. 6).
Known by eleven surviving forms, furniture from the Deshler suite comprises: The side chair offered here and an easy chair that descended in the same family line, sold Christie’s, New York, 4 June 1988, lot 227 (illustrated in Hornor, pl. 237); a pair of side chairs (numbered V and VIII) and a card table, sold, Christie’s, New York, Philadelphia Splendor: The Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Max R. Zaitz, 22 January 2016, lots 172-174; four side chairs (numbered I, III, VI and VII, one illustrated in Hornor, pl. 238) and the mate to the previous card table in the collections of the Philadelphia Museum of Art (illustrated in Hornor, pl. 236); a single side chair illustrated in Israel Sack, Inc., American Antiques from Israel Sack, vol. VI, p. 48, P3920.
[i] Luke Beckerdite, “Thomas Johnson, Hercules Courtenay, and the Dissemination of London Rococo Design,” American Furniture 2016, Luke Beckerdite, ed. (Milwaukee, 2016), pp. 23-61. 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. For the Tufft and Gillingham attributions, see Alexandra Alevizatos Kirtley, American Furniture 1650-1840, Highlights from the Philadelphia Museum of Art (Philadelphia, 2020), pp. 112-114, 116-117, nos. 76-82, 84-85.
[ii] Thomas Johnson, [Designs for] glass frames, ovals, stands for candles, etc. (London, 1758), plate 47; the same design published in Thomas Johnson, One Hundred and Fifty New Designs (London, 1761), plate 11.
[iii] See fn. i above. The marble-top table is in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, acc. no. 18.110.27a, b. For comparative illustrations of these cabochon motifs, see Brunk 2007, p. 31, fig. 46 and Beckerdite 2016, p. 51, figs. 52-55.
[iv] Luke Beckerdite, “Pattern Carving in Eighteenth-Century Philadelphia,” American Furniture 2014, Luke Beckerdite, ed. (Milwaukee, 2014), pp. 126-129, figs. 86, 88-90.
[v] See family chart, Christie’s, New York, Philadelphia Splendor: The Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Max R. Zaitz, January 22, 2016, p. 55.
[vi] 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.