Are there any drawings that you/Newark would be comfortable with me sharing on this blog (I’d share them all if I could)? It seems a shame to leave important stuff like that in a dark vault somewhere. I’d be happy to contribute scanning labor!

All of the evidence for Jelliff, with a couple of exceptions in signed and dated pieces from earlier in his career, is family hearsay and tradition based in Newark’s own collection. NO other evidence exists. All theorizing that doesn’t start in our files is whistling in the dark.

My theory as to Jelliff wholesaling through Schrenkeisen is only based on that one set, and perhaps Jelliff (if he did this) never did it again for exactly that low-profit-margin reason. It seems pretty clear that Jelliff did not sell under his own name anywhere outside of Newark, and indeed “New York” furniture would have had an appeal across the nation, whereas Newark furniture would have meant nothing. We have suggestive evidence that Jelliff & Co. was in fact retailing Mitchell and Rammelsberg furniture from Cincinnati in his Newark store; although actual trade practices among furniture makers has not yet been studied sufficiently.

My major complaint in all of the “controversy” is that my very dear friend Anna, and my much admired colleague Charles Venable, then at Dallas, never once came and studied the documents we have in our archives related to Jelliff. We have over 100 drawings done by Jelliff himself, most of which have never been seen or published.