AFA Summer 2018

Summer 96 www.afamag.com |  www.incollect.com Apartments and General Upholsterer.”  6 As such, he was responsible for a major part of the decoration of the rooms. His invoice, also listed by room, itemizes the seaming of 456 yards of carpeting, hemming the enormous quantity of bed and table linen supplied by Bacon, and fashioning muslin curtains and silk drapery for sixteen windows, as well as curtains, mattresses, and pillows for the beds, for a total of $2286.89. Hedges’ workshop, too, must have worked nonstop. The most elaborate room was the twenty by twenty-four foot drawing room on the first floor, where Lafayette greeted the public on the last full day of his visit. It was in this room that the couch, chairs, and the piano were placed along with a rosewood pier table and rosewood center table, both with marble tops. The crimson plush upholstery of the couch was complemented by Hedges’ crimson silk drapery and the “claret color” of the Brussels carpet. The drapery hung from cornices of “Burnishd Gold with rich Brass Ends,” and was trimmed with silk fringe, binding, and yellow “rope” or cord. A single muslin curtain at each of the ten-foot high windows was drawn to one side and held in place by a “Drapery Pin.” Hedges’ description that the drapery and curtains were “For four windows and pier” suggests that the cornice and drapery valance spanned two windows and the space between them (the pier) in a style called “continued drapery,” similar to the treatment illustrated in a plate of George Smith’s A Collection of Designs for Household Furniture and Interior Decoration (1808) and one that was popular in Boston at the time (Fig. 10). The room was lit by the hanging cut-glass center lamp and two pairs of gilt argand lamps “lent” by Vose, and further appointed with white and gold porcelain vases with landscape views and an “alabaster Paris Time Piece.” Eliza Susan Quincy, who served as a kind of secretary for her father, the mayor, and kept a journal detailing the week’s events, wrote that the walls were “ornamented with the portraits of the five Presidents by Stuart.”  7 These were the set that John Doggett had commissioned from Gilbert Stuart in 1822 and which later served as the source for his lithographic series “The American Kings.”  8 What more appropriate to display in this room than images of the men who led the new nation whose freedom Lafayette helped secure, many of whom he knew well and would visit later on his journey (Fig. 11). John Doggett also provided, with a minimal down payment, two pairs of looking glasses, the most expensive of which, valued at $425, was probably used in this room. One would have been placed between the windows on the wall with the continued drapery and the other used as a chimney glass above the mantel. They are further described in the auction notice as “1 pair of Looking Glasses, French plates, rich black and gold reeded frames.” Doggett’s second pair of looking glasses was used in the drawing room directly above on the second floor. In this room, Hedges used yellow silk drapery for the windows, providing a stylish contrast with the black horsehair upholstery of the two mahogany sofas and twelve chairs. Here the silk was draped over large carved and gilded wreaths and corner ornaments at each window. Hedges provided the same treatment for the window in the bedchamber across the hall, presumably the one used by Lafayette, and no doubt where Vose’s expensive “French Bedstead with Gilt Ornaments” was installed. The bed was probably similar to the one illustrated in Pierre de la Mésangère’s published plate “Lit à Couronne,” (bed with wreath) (Fig. 12). The gilt and carved wreath used to suspend the principal drapery depicted in the print corresponds to Thomas Hedges’ charge for a “Large Carved Reath [ sic ] in Burnishd Gold.” At least five surviving beds similar to this French design are attributable to the Vose & Son shop, including those owned by Boston merchant Fig. 12: Lit a Couronne (bed with wreath), plate 614, in Pierre de la Mésangère’s Collection de Meubles et Objets de Goût (Paris: Au Bureau du Journal des Dames et des Modes,1802–1831). The wreath supporting drapery seen in this plate is probably similar to the one supplied by upholsterer Thomas Hedges for the “French bed” made by Vose for Lafayette’s bed chamber. Several of de la Mésangère’s widely circulated designs were adapted by Vose for furniture he made in Boston. Courtesy of the Winterthur Library, Printed Books and Manuscripts Collection (NK2386 L22 F). Fig. 14: Abel Bowen and William Hoogland, engraving of Lafayette inscribed, “Honor to the Brave/ LAFAYETTE,” 1824. Eliza Susan Quincy pasted this dinner party souvenir into the journal she kept of Lafayette’s visit to Boston. Collection of the Massachusetts Historical Society (Ms. N-764, QP-44, p. 42).