AFA Summer 2018

2018 Antiques & Fine Art 97 Charles Russell Codman, Daniel Webster, Nathan Appleton, and Rev. Francis Parkman (Fig. 13), and a fifth with no family history. None of these survives with an accompanying carved wreath. Two less expensive French beds, draped with blue silk to match the window curtains, were in the rooms on the third floor that were intended for Lafayette’s son, George Washington Lafayette, and his secretary Auguste Levasseur. Eliza Susan Quincy recorded in detail the public events and speeches, as well as more intimate details of Lafayette’s private visits with friends and conversations at parties and dinners. At one dinner given by George Ticknor, a likeness of Lafayette printed on red paper was placed under a glass at each place at the table (Fig. 14), which the guests later pinned to their clothing. Lafayette then bowed to them and said, “You are all very good to me. I am very much obliged to you.”  9 Being the documentarian that she was, Eliza pasted hers into her journal, thus preserving a small but unique souvenir of a grand event in Boston’s history. Isaac Vose & Son’s furniture formed an integral part of the episode that Eliza rhapsodized about in her diary, “The whole of the scene, was the height of the moral sublime, such a country, such a people, such a man, and such a reception, are unparalleled in the history of the world.”  10 Entrepreneurship and Classical Design in Boston’s South End: The Furniture of Isaac Vose and Thomas Seymour, 1815 to 1825, the first exhibit dedicated to Vose’s furniture, will be on view at Massachusetts Historical Society, 1154 Boylston Street, Boston, Mass., May 11–Sept. 15, 2018. A catalogue titled Rather Elegant Than Showy: The Classical Furniture of Isaac Vose, with 340 illustrations, accompanies the exhibit. Robert D. Mussey, Jr. is an independent furniture scholar and a retired furniture conservator in Milton, Mass. He is author of The Furniture Masterworks of John & Thomas Seymour . Richard C. Nylander is curator emeritus, Historic New England. 1. MHS Proceedings, 1st series, 4 (1858–60): 146. 2. City of Boston Archives, West Roxbury, Mass. 3. The house was occupied by a group of Boston gentlemen who comprised the Bunker Hill Monument Association founded in 1823 to raise money to build a lasting memorial to the famous early battle of the Revolution. Membership required “subscribing” a donation of money, thus the name, “Subscription House.” Members saw Lafayette’s visit as an ideal opportunity to solicit additional donations for their cause, hence their offer of the house for his lodging there. 4. Vose & Son also imported lighting from England and France, as well as gilt looking glasses, furniture hardware “ornaments,” furnishing textiles, and drapery patterns. 5. No parallel furniture rental for any other Boston event is known to the authors. According to furniture scholar Peter Kenny, the city of New York rented from various New York makers and furnishing suppliers for the 1834 visit of President Andrew Jackson and Vice President Martin Van Buren in June 1833. See the subsequent auction advertisement in New York Commercial Advertiser , June 17, 1833. 6. Boston Daily Advertiser , March 20, 1824, and numerous later dates. 7. Eliza Susan Quincy, “Journal of Lafayette’s Visit, 1824-1825,” 42. Quincy Family Papers, Ms. N-764, QP-44, Massachusetts Historical Society. 8. Doggett announced in an ad in the November 16, 1825, issue of Boston’s Columbian Centinel , the arrival in Boston from France of the lithographic plates for the “ Portraits of the Presidents,” and that they had “adorned the residence of the Nation’s Guest during his visit to this city.” 9. Quincy, “Journal,” 42. 10. Quincy, “Journal,” 34. Fig. 13: French bed. Mahogany, Honduras mahogany, birch, ebonized maple (prob.), brass, steel, modern fabric. H. 47⅜, L. 84¾, D. 51¼ in. Isaac Vose & Son. The three French beds provided by Vose & Son for Lafayette’s lodgings probably resembled this example made for Rev. Francis Parkman in 1823 or 1824, after the birth of his first son, Francis Parkman Jr., who later became the noted Boston historian. Colonial Society of Massachusetts (17.1), gift of the great- grandchildren of Rev. Francis Parkman. Photo by David Bohl.