November 4, 1976
American Painted Furniture: 1680-1880, an exhibition of sixteen examples from the collection of The Brooklyn Museum, will be on view from December 1, 1976 through April 16, 1977, in the Special Exhibition Galleries on the Museum’s fourth floor. Additional examples from the Museum’s extensive holdings are on permanent display in the 21 American period rooms now open to the public.
From a late seventeenth-century Massachusetts dressing table to a late nineteenth-century sideboard by Herter Brothers of New York, the exhibition presents a chronology of American painted furniture. Paint is perhaps the most common furniture decoration in the two centuries covered here. Common Windsors like the Museum’s late eighteenth-century chair by the New York chairmakers, John and James Always, were generally painted. Paint was also popular for high-style furniture, as on the 1823 window bench by Duncan Phyfe, also in the exhibition.
Regional variations are illustrated in two early eighteenth-century chests, one from western Long Island, and the other from Taunton, Massachusetts. Of similar design, the painted decoration on each chest suggests its origin. Various techniques of painted decoration are shown in a 1750’s japanned tall clock from New York and an early nineteenth-century wall clock with eglomise panel from Boston.
A Hitchcock rocker from the 1840’s with stenciled decoration and a New York fancy settee, circa 1820, document the use of painted decoration on mass-produced furniture. An early nineteenth-century chest and chair with fanciful folk painting balance the more common and high-style pieces in the exhibition illustrating the wide range of American painted furniture.
The exhibition was organized by Donald C. P[ei]rce, Assistant Curator of The Brooklyn Museum’s Department of Decorative Arts.
Brooklyn Museum Archives. Records of the Department of Public Information. Press releases, 1971 - 1988. 1976, 018 View Original
