Delaware Antiques Show 2025

3 Michael W. Bell, “‘First Rate & Fashionable’: Handmade Nineteenth Century Furniture at the Tennessee State Museum,” Tennessee Historical Quarterly 62 , no. 1 (2003). http://www.jstor.org/stable/4262852 4 Amber M. Clawson, “The McAdams Family of Cabinetmakers and the Cultural Palette of East Tennessee’s Rope and Tassel School of Furniture,” Museum of Early Southern Decorative Arts Journal, 2017. https://www.mesdajournal.org/2016/the-mcadams-family-of-cabinetmakers-and- the-cultural-palette-of-east-tennessees-rope-and-tassel-school-of-furniture/ 5 Asa Earl Martin, “THE ANTI-SLAVERY SOCIETIES OF TENNESSEE.” Tennessee Historical Magazine 1, no. 4 (1915): 261–81. http://www.jstor.org/stable/42637323. evidences the influence of Shenandoah Valley makers throughout Tennessee. A fixed rail, mitered to the front of each chamfered corner edge, is a potentially diagnostic structural detail mirrored in two desks, dated between 1795 and 1805, from Middle Tennessee cabinetmaker Joseph McBride. The ebullient presence of inlay throughout the desk, however, consistently connects the desk to eastern Tennessee. After 1790, inlaid furniture abounded and East Tennessee cabinetmakers responded accordingly, looking to figural inlay seen on Baltimore Federal furniture. 3 In her 2015 dissertation, Amber Clawson Albert traces the desk to Washington and Greene counties’ Nolichucky River Valley rope and tassel school, a body of early nineteenth-century East Tennessee case furniture with elaborate inlay, and Hugh McAdams’s cabinetmaking shop. The inlaid bellflowers, diamonds, and enclosed quatrefoil forms with intertwined ribbons closely relate to inlaid decoration on other case furniture by McAdams. A silhouette profile included on the prospect center door, one of the most unusual and striking features of the inlaid decoration, further strengthens the attribution to McAdams. Whether an image of the owner, or a perhaps contemporary political figure, the sitter’s identity has yet to be determined. Tantalizingly, McAdams’ 1815 estate sale lists a physiognotrace, a device used to cut profiles, among his cabinetmaking tools. Albert describes how McAdams, a War of 1812 veteran, may have “[celebrated] America via his craft,” identifying the desk’s inlaid eagle as a national symbol with personal significance. 4 Comparable interpretation can be seen at Winterthur, with the desk’s profile and “1808” date potentially referencing James Madison’s successful presidential election. The fallboard’s prominent patriotic inlay and “Liberty” encircling the profile could also speak to a maker or owner’s anti-slavery beliefs, as abolitionist sentiment traveled westward with settlers along the Great Wagon Road. The early nineteenth century saw nationwide actions against slavery; Congress prohibited the importation of enslaved people on January 1, 1808, and in 1797, a letter written by Quaker minister, Pennsylvania immigrant, and East Tennessee resident Thomas Embree describes a meeting among “...citizens of Washington and Greene counties…for the purpose of forming abolition societies in East Tennessee modeled after those in Philadelphia, Baltimore, Richmond and Winchester.” 5 This desk is a celebration of the migrations, makers, and movements that shaped it. Efforts to determine a regional ‘identity’ have instead revealed an American story that will continue to be told with each new question asked of it. — 14 —