philafurniture.com
Resources for the Study of Philadelphia Furniture
The first ever printed catalogue of the highlights of the Philadelphia Museum of Art’s collection of early American furniture was published in the fall of 2020, featuring 200 richly illustrated entries researched and written by curator Alexandra Kirtley on more than 300 pieces of furniture—many of them fresh from conservation treatments. The museum's holdings of early American furniture rank among the finest in this country, with particular strengths in works made in Philadelphia and Southeastern Pennsylvania and a notable collection of furniture made in New York, New England, and all points south, including Campeche, Mexico.
The research phase of the project inspired Kirtley to consider what, if any, furniture was related to the museum’s iconic high chest and dressing table made in Philadelphia and carved with the moment of truth from Aesop’s fable of “The Fox and the Grapes.” This quest lead to her in-depth consideration of the progression of the design of the front rails of high chest and dressing table ensembles, which were by the early 1740s a completely American design innovation. The first iteration of philafurniture.com is Kirtley’s taxonomy for describing the rails of Philadelphia high chests and dressing tables; in time, the website will be the place where we will post more about the design inspirations of Philadelphia furniture, construction techniques, and artisans who made, carved, upholstered, and ornamented the furniture. The website seeks to provide a space for the appreciation, study, interpretation, and research on Philadelphia furniture.
Acknowledgments
As with any worthy project, this one has developed with valuable input from colleagues. It began in November 2017 with my fervor for collecting images of high chests and dressing tables organized and reorganized in like groups with the help of Gina Lewis, a former assistant for the furniture catalogue. American Art departmental assistant Lisa Morra arranged the purchase of the url philafurniture.com in January 2018 and laid out the initial website design—which has been tweaked but remains close to what she so elegantly arranged with her amazing grace. By the summer of 2018, the website was populated, and Emelie Gevalt, a PhD candidate at the University of Delaware and now Curator at the American Folk Art Museum in New York, worked with me to improve the images, standardize the presentation, and further refine the groups and subgroups. In the spring of 2019, I was fortunate to be able to hire Alison Tufano as publications assistant. Alison has been the wind in my sails, supporting me in every way as I wrote the furniture catalogue’s 200 entries, and she has patiently worked with me and Kathleen Krattenmaker, the book’s editor, to reach our goals. I thank Alison for never losing sight of my passion for this website. She has, with her keen art historian’s eye, worked hard to further refine it and make it engaging and nimble—setting our sights on its potential growth and expansion—adding the index and generally making it happen. My longtime friend, the collector and scholar (and retired tax attorney) Forbes Maner, kindly culled through auction catalogues for Philadelphia high chests and dressing tables and sent hundreds of images, helping to broaden and expand the groups and affirm their attributes. I thank James E. Gergat for kindly assisting with the life dates of artisans. Finely, I am grateful to the institutions who have allowed us to publish images of their furniture.
aak/Wilmington, Delaware/May 2020
Alexandra Alevizatos Kirtley
Photograph by Gavin Ashworth
Alexandra Alevizatos Kirtley is the Montgomery-Garvan Curator of American Decorative Arts at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, where she began her tenure in 2001 by taking an inventory of the furniture collections and then directing a survey of the collection, funded by the Luce Foundation, from 2003 to 2005. Mrs. Kirtley has orchestrated significant additions to the museum's collection and has curated exhibitions on the work of colonial-era porcelain manufacturers Gousse Bonnin & George Anthony Morris (2008), the 1772 Philadelphia Furniture “Price Book,” (2009), Loyalists and the American Revolution in Philadelphia (2011), and (with Peggy A. Olley) the painted and gilded klismos furniture (pictured) designed in 1808 by architect B. Henry Latrobe for the house of William and Mary Wilcocks Waln (2016). She has published extensively on early American art and furniture and presents her research at symposia throughout the United States.