Winter 2016

2016 Antiques & Fine Art 141 Fig. 5: Side chair, one of an original set of 24, John Aitken, Philadelphia, 1797. Mahogany, light wood, inlay. H. 373⁄16, SH. 20⅝, SW. 18¾ inches. Courtesy George Washington’s Mount Vernon; Purchase (1998). whose painted furniture manufactory thrived from 1804 until the 1830s, to create a closely related set of furniture for the President’s House of James and Dolley Madison. Like Aitken had a year earlier, the Finlays struggled to make the klismos form, and Latrobe wrote to Dolley Madison: “I had to design, and even lay out in the frame, the whole of the furniture of your drawing room, also a public concern. Workmen require constant watching in the commencement of work which is new to them. They must be taught like Children.”  17 Classical Splendor: Painted Furniture for a Grand Philadelphia House is on view at the Philadelphia Museum of Art through January 1, 2017. The exhibition catalogue by Alexandra Alevizatos Kirtley and Peggy A. Olley, which includes a detailed catalogue entry and further biographical information, is published in association with Yale University Press (2016). A symposium sponsored by the Center for America art at PMA and The Decorative Arts Trust is planned for November 4, featuring Susan Buck, Gregory Weidman, Peter Kenny, Emily Erdmans, and Keynote Speaker Annabelle Selldorf, FAIA. Registration is online at www.philamuseum.org an d decorativeartstrust.org. For information on the exhibition and catalogue, visit www.philamuseum.org. Alexandra Alevizatos Kirtley is The Montgomery-Garvan Curator of American Decorative Arts at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Her select catalogue of the PMA’s early American furniture collection is forthcoming in 2020. 1. As part of the project, the house has also received new attention from the author and Peggy Olley, as well as from architectural consultant James B. Garrison and architectural historian Jeffrey A. Cohen. 2. Latrobe to Mary Elizabeth Latrobe, August 21, 1808, in Corr ., vol. 2, p. 652. 3. Latrobe to Waln, August 21, 1808, in Papers , 65/F8. 4. Latrobe to Waln, August 25, 1808, in Papers , 66/ A6. The sideboard’s unpainted top, base, and back could easily have been made in the four days between August 21, when Latrobe wrote to his wife, and August 25. However, it is likely that the plaster pilasters and rosettes were not yet ready and that the front columns would only have been in the rough, and required further embellishment, perhaps from Bridport upon his arrival in Philadelphia in October 1808. 5. The listing for Aitken and Ribaud in White’s Philadelphia directory of 1785 does not include a street number. The two men dissolved their partnership on October 19, 1785, and Aitken moved his cabinetmaking concern to that same location at Second and Chestnut; Pennsylvania Packet , October 25, 1785. It is not known exactly when Aitken and Ford dissolved their partnership. 6. Federal Gazette (Philadelphia), June 10, 1790. 7. George Washington House Account, February 21, 1797 (chairs and sideboards), and March 13, 1797 (tambour secretary), Mount Vernon. The tambour secretary, the chairs, and one of the sideboards remain on view at Mount Vernon. 8. Philadelphia Gazette , March 24, 1797. 9. Federal Gazette (Philadelphia), August 5, 1797. 10. City Gazette and Daily Advertiser (Charleston), September 14, 1798. While this ad does not mention Aitken by name, the two were partners by July 14, 1798, advertising that they had moved to 79 Dock Street, Aitken’s shop, from Cocks’ shop at Sixth and Chestnut (which Aitken would occupy after Cocks’ death in 1799, and from which Aitken made the Waln furniture). See Federal Gazette (Philadelphia), July 14, 1798. An October 1799 advertisement properly calls the partnership Cocks & Co. See Federal Gazette (Philadelphia), October 16, 1799. 11. Will of William Cocks, Wills for 1799, no. 195, Register of Wills and Inventories, County of Philadelphia, Downs Collection, Winterthur Library (959–1355). The accounts charge “To a dressing Table not included in the Inventory,” but the inventory does not survive. Also notably mentioned are “a quantity of inlaid Shells.” 12. See Clark Pearce, Catherine Ebert, and Alexandra Alevizatos Kirtley, “From Apprentice to Master: The Life and Career of Philadelphia Cabinetmaker George G. Wright,” in American Furniture 2007, ed. Luke Beckerdite (Easthampton, MA: Antique Collectors’ Club), pp. 110–31 and Alexandra Kirtley and Peggy Olley, Classical Splendor: Painted Furniture for a Grand Philadelphia House (Philadelphia: PMA, 2016), catalogue no. 5, pp. 136–139. 13. Commercial Advertiser (New York) , May 12, 1806. The proximity of the upholstery shop of John Vallence [also Vallance], a fellow Scot who joined the Saint Andrew’s Society in 1799, may suggest that the two worked on commissions together; Historical Catalogue of the Saint Andrew’s Society in Philadelphia, p. 91. 14. Aitken’s shop occupied a three-story brick building on a 640-square-foot lot on the southwest corner of Chestnut and Sixth streets. The shop was valued at $1,500 in the 1798 United States Direct Tax records—a sizeable amount given that Richard Peters’s nearby house at Walnut and Sixth streets occupied 2,160 square feet and was taxed at $2,500. Pennsylvania U.S. Direct Tax Lists, 1798, Ancestry.com. 15. Political and Commercial Daily Register , December 16, 1814. 16. Philadelphia County Deed Book MR13, p. 278, Philadelphia City Archives. Four more houses situated on that corner were included in Aitken’s 1839 will; Will 9879, written March 15, 1839, proven September 30, 1839, Chester County (PA) Archives. 17. Latrobe to Dolley Madison, September 8, 1809, in Corr ., vol. 2, p. 761. See letter from Samuel Smith to Dolley Madison in which he advocates for Latrobe to choose the Finlays for the Madison commission. Smith to Dolley Payne Todd Madison, March 10, 1809, in The Dolley Madison Digital Edition , ed. Holly C. Shulman, http://rotunda.upress.virginia. edu:8080/dmde.