I was contacted by someone who was curious if the Rare Victorian community could take a look at this newly found, rare photo of Emily Dickinson. It was previously believed that there was only one of her in existence, but research in to the verification of this new image is proving to be promising that it is a morphological match for Emily.

Apparently, there is a desire to uncover which photographer may have taken the photo and that identifying the chair might be of some help to do that.  I assume that this chair model/design probably was reproduced by its maker hundreds or thousands of times and shipped/sold throughout the U.S., so I wonder about the ability to match it to a particular photographer studio or even final locale due to a lack of uniqueness.

I do not have my copies of Gothic Revival furniture reference books at hand at the moment, so I wonder if the Gothic fans out there could take a look at this photo and see if anyone recognizes it well enough to assign a maker and possibly date of manufacture.

Here are two stories on the find of this photograph, here and here.

If you are a R.J. Horner Renaissance Revival fan, you should hop over to RJHorner.com and read the two latest Horner attribution-debunking posts:

Another Horner is actually Robert Mitchell

There Is No Horner Egg

Moving onto another genre, the Aesthetes in the audience may be interested in this ebonized chair which is currently being bid up to $510.  I think original upholstery may be on this one:

Moving on to Renaissance Revival, we often see big bulky furniture being attributed to Thomas Brooks on slim evidence. In this case, I think we are a hair better than slim. There are documented examples of bedroom furniture by Brooks with carved heads emerging from the crests, usually cherubs (see “American Furniture of the 19th Century 1840-1880″ page 204, Richard and Eileen Dubrow).  One could point to several other design elements and compare them to documented Brooks pieces, but I will leave that to the well-initiated.  The high-end marble also points to one of the better makers having made this piece.  I have inquired with the seller if this “Thomas Brooks” piece has a stencil bearing the name…

Also, I think that the seller’s description missed the presence of maple in the construction as it is not all Walnut.  Certainly, a nice dresser if the big battle wagons of the era are what you collect.

I received an email from a Rare Victorian visitor recently of a find in an as-yet-unnamed museum. He provided pictures of a cabinet that the museum staff was not sure of what they had. This RV visitor took some pics and went away thinking it was quite “Herter-ish”. I agree.

It appears to be largely Maple with very high quality inlay. Also, pay attention to the substantial hinges on the lower front doors and the basket-weave carving on the side of the top of the cabinet. I can’t match any element of the cabinet with known Herter after about 15 minutes of comparisons, but maybe other can. It certainly is made by a high-end maker and probably New York.

What do you think?

The great, great, great-grandson of John Henry Belter contacted me seeing if I could help locate a John Henry Belter desk available for sale:
“My father, aunts and uncle have many pieces of his furniture in their houses and my wife would like a secretary desk”. If anyone is aware of one, please let me know.

Aesthetic brass beds don’t pop up often to my recollection, nor to “aesthete”, who alerted us to the bed in the forum.  This one is being offered on Ebay at an asking price of $4,300 and considering how infrequently you run into one, that may not be an unrealistic price.  I’m wondering if it was more common/popular to have this style of bed in the UK than it seems to have been in the U.S.; thus the reason for their rarity.  In doing some brass bed research, I read that it seems that simpler styles were more popular for both the high and low end.  More photos available at the listing.

A Herter Brothers cabinet commissioned by J. Pierpont Morgan in the early 1880s  is coming up for sale during a May 8th and 9th auction at Stair Antique Auctioneers and Appraisers in Hudson, NY.  The painted and gilt cabinet is a signed and numbered piece and can be seen in the photo above.  More details from Stair Galleries:

The sale will feature an important Herter Brothers painted and gilt maple cabinet made c.1880-1882 for the financier, banker and art collector J. Pierpont Morgan. In 1880, Morgan purchased a c.1853-1856 brownstone house at the northeast corner of Madison Avenue and East 36th Street, New York City. He commissioned the New York firm of Herter Brothers to remodel the house and to decorate and furnish the interior. The project was overseen by Christian Herter, who worked closely with Morgan’s wife, Frances Morgan, on the interior decoration and on the selection of textiles and other furnishings. For the drawing room, the firm created a “Pompeian” decorative scheme featuring dado paneling painted ivory with gold flecks, pilasters and frieze in Pompeian red and a mosaic-style coved ceiling. Herter Brothers also provided much of the furniture, which included the cabinet offered for sale. The cabinet’s ivory paint with gold flecks, red highlights and gilt details echoed the ivory, red and gold color scheme of the drawing room’s decoration. The cabinet can be clearly seen in a photograph of the Morgan drawing room, published in 1883 in George Sheldon’s “Artistic Houses.” A year after the Morgan commission was completed, Herter Brothers decorated the drawing room of the Oliver Ames house in Boston and supplied a very similar cabinet, which is now in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Published: George William Sheldon, “Artistic Houses, Being a Series of Interior Views of a Number of the Most Beautiful and Celebrated Homes in the United States with a Description of the Art Treasures Contained Therein,” New York, 1883;  Arnold Lewis et al., “The Opulent Interiors of the Gilded Age,” New York, 1987, p. 146 (for a period photograph showing the cabinet in situ in the drawing room at 219 Madison Avenue);  Doreen Bolger Burke, et al., “In Pursuit of Beauty: Americans and the Aesthetic Movement,” 1986, p. 167 (for an illustration of the Morgan cabinet);  Katherine S. Howe et al., “Herter Brothers: Furniture and Interiors for a Gilded Age,” 1994, pp. 86-88 (for a discussion of the 1880-1882 Morgan commission) and p. 85 (for a period photograph of the drawing room with cabinet in situ).

This antique wall cabinet is in the same shop about 15 feet away from the Kimbel & Cabus cabinet profiled in the prior post, so I thought that I would pass on the fact that it is also available for sale.  These cabinets are fairly popular with collectors and can be affordably acquired when you run across one.  There is always an open wall somewhere that can accept one of these.

I did the obvious check to see if this cabinet appeared in the Kimbel & Cabus catalog as the cabinet had, but unless my fast pace in doing so resulted in an oversight, I did not see it there.  Not that I expected it to be – it’s just something easily checked.

If you are a Kimbel & Cabus collector, you may be interested to know of a cabinet that is available in Narberth, PA.  I was given a tip by a Rare Victorian visitor that “Antiques at 236″ has some interesting items in stock, one of which was made by Kimbel & Cabus.  I always take attributions to this maker hesitantly because so much Modern Gothic furniture is associated with them without much thought – just as anything with marquetry and flowers is by Herter Brothers.

However, in this case we have a match in the 1870 Kimbel & Cabus catalog with model #244.  Every detail is the same except for the lost tiles which can easily be replaced as are seen in the photo.  If you are knowledgeable in antique tiles, you may even be able to identify those in the catalog image and source some identical replacements.

Contact information for Antiques at 236:

236 Haverford Avenue
Narberth, PA 19072-2342
(610) 668-1871

And please – those of you in the Philadelphia region – keep sending my your tips and I’ll share what what we find.

I picked up this Philadelphia Centennial Exhibition promotional hand fan at an antique store earlier this week. Although it has Japanese themes, it makes no mention of being directly associated with that portion of the exhibition.
The names and locations across the top of the fan all refer to hotels in Philadelphia that would have housed attendees. You can see the same names in a list of “hotels having fifty rooms or over” in a guide that was produced at the time.
Click on the images below for larger versions.

John Henry Belter Cornucopia pattern up for sale on Ebay?  Yes, it happened.

Say what you will about Ebay and eschew it at your own buying risk.  A John Henry Belter Cornucopia armchair popped up several days ago, seemingly in half decent condition.  I corresponded with the seller and got this information from them:

This chair has been floating around my family between several great aunts and uncles as long as I can remember. It sat in my great grandmother’s living room for many years and then my grandparents. It has been reupholstered but as far as I know has no repairs and only minor imperfections which would be expected in a piece of this age

The chair sold on Ebay for $6,400.

Cornucopia pattern furniture by John Henry Belter is generally viewed as the best of his best. This particular chair had the rarer reeded gooseneck arms; a design only seen with this pattern.

To see it pop up on Ebay surprised me and I had to bid on it.  But alas, I was not willing to spend what the winner was willing to dole out and I still feel that they got a fair deal on this particular chair.  I don’t believe that you will see another one with a $4,000 reserve sold by a private seller on Ebay again.  Maybe one may pop up from a dealer, but not fresh out of grandma’s parlor.

Who knows what the buyer’s intentions are with this chair.  It may get absorbed into a private collection and not see light of day for another 50 years or you may see it rear it’s crest at one of the popular auction houses in the near future for a quick flip.

If you’d like to see a grand sofa in the cornucopia style, hop on over to the Met Museum and take a look at the photos here.