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Lot Essay
With its delicately stencilled gilt motifs, faux-rosewood surfaces, marbleized top, and distinctive form, this pier table displays many features associated with the most accomplished Baltimore furniture of the early nineteenth century.
By the late eighteenth-century, Baltimore had become a prosperous urban center with an inland port supporting a flourishing mercantile economy. As a result, a large and cultivated local gentry emerged, eager to display their sophistication and disposable wealth. Enamored of antiquity and republican ideals, these newly prosperous patrons favored designs that incorporated ancient symbols. While some Baltimoreians such as Robert Gilmor, Jr., traveled abroad and returned with ancient objects, the influence of antiquity on American furniture was communicated mainly through French and English interpretations of the ancient world. European decorative arts were known to Baltimore cabinetmakers through imported goods and pattern books.
For the better part of four decades, John (1777-1851) and Hugh Finlay (1781-1831) were credited with the manufacture and decoration of the highest quality painted-furniture in Baltimore. Not long after they set up shop in 1803, they were manufacturing large numbers of painted chairs with forms echoing those published by Thomas Sheraton in his Cabinet-Maker and Upholsterer's Drawing-Book (London, 1791-4), and with decorations extrapolated or copied from engravings published by Percier and Fontaine (Paris, 1798-1811) and Thomas Hope (London, 1807). Hugh Finlay travelled to Europe in December 1810 to expand his inventory of design sources (see Weidman, Classical Maryland 1815-1845: Fine and Decorative Arts from the Golden Age (Maryland, 1993), p.100).
Throughout their careers, the Finlay shop incorporated aspects of imported design sources to create furniture that not only represented the sophistication of their shop, the character of their patrons in several states, but that served as protoypes for many other Baltimore makers.
The form and aspects of the decoration of the table illustrated here can be linked to several known tables in museum collections. The only table documented by Hugh Finlay was made for Humberton Skipwith of Prestwould in Clarksville, Virginia and has a nearly identical base (illustrated in Weidman, 1993, p.99). Other tables with nearly identical bases include one at the Valentine Museum (figure 1), another in the Bybee Collection (illustrated in Venable, American Furniture in the Bybee Collection (Dallas, 1989), p.118, and a third sold from the Warhol Collection at Sotheby's New York, April 29 and 30, 1988, lot 3215. The tri-part division of the facade ornamentation follows the same compositional principles as the decoration on a table at the Maryland Historical Society (illustrated Weidman, Furniture in Maryland, 1740-1940 (Baltimore, 1984), p.194, fig.172). Additionally, the double-ended standard with anthemion termini and circular motifs at center found on the table offered here is very similar to those found on a pier table illustrated in Elder, Baltimore Painted Furniture 1800-1840 (Baltimore, 1972), p.56.
By the late eighteenth-century, Baltimore had become a prosperous urban center with an inland port supporting a flourishing mercantile economy. As a result, a large and cultivated local gentry emerged, eager to display their sophistication and disposable wealth. Enamored of antiquity and republican ideals, these newly prosperous patrons favored designs that incorporated ancient symbols. While some Baltimoreians such as Robert Gilmor, Jr., traveled abroad and returned with ancient objects, the influence of antiquity on American furniture was communicated mainly through French and English interpretations of the ancient world. European decorative arts were known to Baltimore cabinetmakers through imported goods and pattern books.
For the better part of four decades, John (1777-1851) and Hugh Finlay (1781-1831) were credited with the manufacture and decoration of the highest quality painted-furniture in Baltimore. Not long after they set up shop in 1803, they were manufacturing large numbers of painted chairs with forms echoing those published by Thomas Sheraton in his Cabinet-Maker and Upholsterer's Drawing-Book (London, 1791-4), and with decorations extrapolated or copied from engravings published by Percier and Fontaine (Paris, 1798-1811) and Thomas Hope (London, 1807). Hugh Finlay travelled to Europe in December 1810 to expand his inventory of design sources (see Weidman, Classical Maryland 1815-1845: Fine and Decorative Arts from the Golden Age (Maryland, 1993), p.100).
Throughout their careers, the Finlay shop incorporated aspects of imported design sources to create furniture that not only represented the sophistication of their shop, the character of their patrons in several states, but that served as protoypes for many other Baltimore makers.
The form and aspects of the decoration of the table illustrated here can be linked to several known tables in museum collections. The only table documented by Hugh Finlay was made for Humberton Skipwith of Prestwould in Clarksville, Virginia and has a nearly identical base (illustrated in Weidman, 1993, p.99). Other tables with nearly identical bases include one at the Valentine Museum (figure 1), another in the Bybee Collection (illustrated in Venable, American Furniture in the Bybee Collection (Dallas, 1989), p.118, and a third sold from the Warhol Collection at Sotheby's New York, April 29 and 30, 1988, lot 3215. The tri-part division of the facade ornamentation follows the same compositional principles as the decoration on a table at the Maryland Historical Society (illustrated Weidman, Furniture in Maryland, 1740-1940 (Baltimore, 1984), p.194, fig.172). Additionally, the double-ended standard with anthemion termini and circular motifs at center found on the table offered here is very similar to those found on a pier table illustrated in Elder, Baltimore Painted Furniture 1800-1840 (Baltimore, 1972), p.56.