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Lot Essay
Featuring intricately carved scrollwork and gadrooned raised crests, this suite of furniture is closely related to a number of seating forms made by or attributed to the John and Joseph W. Meeks cabinetmaking firm of New York City. The suite illustrated here is in the "Stanton Hall" pattern, a design that differs only in minor carved details from the "Henry Ford" and "Hawkins" patterns, which are named after identified patrons or current locations of surviving examples. The basis for the group's attribution is a suite of furniture now in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art that was made by Joseph W. Meeks for his daughter, Sophia Teresa, upon her marriage in 1859 to Dexter Hawkins. The "Stanton Hall" pattern is named after a suite commissioned for the Natchez, Mississippi mansion built in 1857 by Frederick Stanton (see Davidson and Stillinger, The American Wing: The Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York, 1985), pp. 168-9, figs. 261-2; Mills Lane, Architecture of the Old South (1993), p. 255; Eileen and Richard Dubrow, American Furniture of the 19th Century, 1840-1880 (Exton, Pennsylvania, 1983), pp. 86, 99, 100, 112, 118, 119 and 129).
The suite descended in the Henderson Family of St. Louis, Missouri and according to family tradition was made for George Henderson, an entrepreneur in the coal industry who appears as early as 1821 in the city's directories. Henderson's descendants inherited his business acumen and ran a variety of successful companies including merchandising plumbing supplies and supplying mules for westward migration. The sofa and two side chairs offered here were originally part of a larger suite that also included two armchairs and four additional side chairs.
The suite descended in the Henderson Family of St. Louis, Missouri and according to family tradition was made for George Henderson, an entrepreneur in the coal industry who appears as early as 1821 in the city's directories. Henderson's descendants inherited his business acumen and ran a variety of successful companies including merchandising plumbing supplies and supplying mules for westward migration. The sofa and two side chairs offered here were originally part of a larger suite that also included two armchairs and four additional side chairs.