AFA Summer 2021

Summer 78 www.afamag.com | w ww.incollect.com Fig. 13: James Alexander Simpson (1805–1880), Portrait of William King Jr., Washington, D.C., 1841. Oil on canvas, 44 x 38 inches. Museum Purchase, Elaine and Don Bogus, Jerry Dalton, Elizabeth T. Gessley, Mary and Clinton Gilliland, Robert F. Grossman, Philip LeDuc, Marcia and Lawrence Long, Margaret Mathews, Margaret Beck Pritchard, Mark and Loretta Roman, and Community Foundation for Northern Virginia/The MOTSTA Fund, 2015-245. Photo courtesy of The Art Museums of Colonial Williamsburg. Not all clock hoods conformed to the shape of the dial. One walnut case made for a movement by John Myer of Frederick, Maryland, between 1775 and 1790, had a pagoda shaped hood (Figs. 5, 6). The passion for Chinese design, as interpreted by European designers, greatly influenced English and American furniture of the mid-eighteenth centur y. Thomas Chippendale and other English cabinetmakers and architects incorporated pagodas, lattice-work, and other elements inspired by Asian design into various furniture forms. The unknown western Maryland maker of this clock case may have been inf luenced by Chippendale’s pagoda shaped clock case, or Batty Langley’s bookcase published in the mid-1750s (Figs. 7, 8). Yet the heavy, baroque construction and design of the rest of his case is more consistent with the work of Germanic cabinetmakers working in the region. 3 This combination of Anglo and Germanic features and influences in one object is reflected in the settlement patterns, as well as the decorative arts of western Maryland. 4