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AA LEAD SEPTEMBER 3: Masterpieces Of American Furniture From The Munson

Williams Proctor Institute

(with cuts)

By Laura Beach

UTICA, N.Y. -- "It can be challenging to take high style Nineteenth Century

furniture and make it accessible to a broad audience," confesses Anna Tobin

D'Ambrosio. This summer, to the curator's satisfaction, the Phillip

Johnson-designed galleries of the Munson-Williams-Proctor Institute have been

filled with visitors. Scholars, likewise, are now more familiar with a

substantial but little known collection.

On view in Utica until October 31, "Masterpieces of American Furniture From

The Munson-Williams-Proctor Institute" contains 65 pieces culled from a

collection started by several generations of the Williams and Proctor

families. Originally furnished with pieces by Charles Baudouine, Herter

Brothers, Leon Marcotte and Pottier & Stymus, their 1850s home, Fountain Elms,

opened to the public in 1960. In the past two decades, the collection has been

expanded to include distinctive designs from the last decades of the

Nineteenth Century.

D'Ambrosio has been the museum's curator of decorative arts since 1989. With a

graduate degree from the Museum Studies Program in Cooperstown, N.Y., she

began work on "Masterpieces" about four years ago. Winterthur awarded her a

research fellowship in 1996.

"Portions of the furniture collection had been published in collected works,

but nothing comprehensive had been done to it," she explains. "So much had

been added in the 1980s and 1990s that we wanted to publish the material. We

also wanted to feature updated research."

D'Ambrosio enlisted the help of top furniture scholars. Kenneth L. Ames,

Donald Scott Bell, Michael K. Brown, Ed Polk Douglas, Donald L. Fennimore,

Jerry V. Grant, Katherine C. Grier, Barry R. Harwood, Judith H. Hull, Jack L.

Lindsey, Robert D. Mussey, Jr, Donald C. Peirce, Jodi A. Pollack, Timothy D.

Rieman, Page Talbott, Charles L. Venable, Catherine Hoover Voorsanger, Gerald

W.R. Ward, Janet Zapata and Philip Zea wrote the 55 entries in the

accompanying catalogue, Masterpieces Of American Furniture From The

Munson-Williams-Proctor Institute. Gerald W.R. Ward, The Carolyn and Peter

Lynch Associate Curator of American Decorative Arts and Sculpture at the

Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, reviewed the essays; his wife, Barbara McLean

Ward, served as manuscript and copy editor.

In her preface, D'Ambrosio acknowledges the contributions of many other art

historians, collectors and dealers -- among them Alex Brammer, W. Scott

Braznell, Margaret Caldwell, Mary de Juli, Peter Hill, Margot Johnson, Jon

King, Hyman Meyers, Peggy Tuck Sinko and Priscilla St Germain. Special thanks,

however, were reserved for Barry R. Harwood of the Brooklyn Museum of Art and

Catherine Hoover Voorsanger of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, two in the

forefront of this field.

The specialists offer fresh insights into the workings of many shops,

particularly those of Charles Baudouine, Edward Hutchings, A. Kimbel and J.

Cabus, and Alexander Roux. The firms of R.J. Horner & Co., Kilian Brothers,

J.& J. W. Meeks, M. & H. Schrenkeisen, and Kilborn Whitman & Co. are

extensively documented.

Published for the first time is a circa 1875-85 worktable richly inlaid with

brass, pewter or lead, mother of pearl, and glass. Though its maker is

unknown, the gracefully proportioned stand is on par with the best labeled

furniture of its era. The hardware, notes D'Ambrosio, is identical to that

found on furnishings from a house purchased by John D. Rockefeller, Sr, in

1881.

A circa 1876 desk by Kimbel & Cabus is in the Modern Gothic style, introduced

by the New York cabinetmaker at the 1876 Philadelphia Centennial. Though not

marked, it is documented by a photograph of a nearly identical desk. The photo

descended in the family of Arthur Kimbel.

Some other discoveries include a circa 1880 side chair attributed to Kilborn,

Whitman & Company of Boston. An armchair once thought to be by Jelliff has

been reattributed to M & H Schrenkeisen of New York, circa 1870-75. One lively

entry is a brass stand with ceramic decoration. It appeared on the back cover

of a Bradley & Hubbard catalogue of 1880 and was acquired by the

Munson-Williams-Proctor Institute in 1966 from Manhattan dealer Margaret

Caldwell.

Fabricated of dazzling silverplate, a tilt-top table designed by Frank Shaw

for Tiffany & Company made headlines when it was knocked down to Margot

Johnson, a New York City dealer, at Sotheby's January Americana sales in 1993.

Also in print for the first time is a circa 1845 games table stamped J and JW

Meeks, New York. Research on the piece was conducted by Jodi Pollack, who

notes the diversified line of a Meeks workshop. It spanned three generations

and at its height is believed to have employed more than 125 people.

D'Ambrosio's inquiry also turned up new information on pieces long in the

MWPI's collection. An inlaid, serpentine-sided Federal card table thought to

be from New York now appears to have been made in Boston. The case for

reattribution is persuasively argued by Gerald Ward.

Inside a drawer of a handsome Quervelle secretary bookcase is a paper label

printed with the cabinetmaker's Philadelphia address. Forced to choose, the

curator says this is her favorite piece. Recently uncovered at the

Philadelphia Museum of Art is a sketch attributed to Quervelle, illustrating a

casepiece very much like the one currently on display.

Cluster columns, arches and tracery combine in an elaborate etagere from a

home in Cazenovia, N.Y. Ranking among the finest examples of American Gothic

furniture ever made, the server was acquired by the museum after D'Ambrosio

received a call from its owner. `Do you ever buy period rooms? Can you come

over and see?" asked the gentleman charged with selling Century House. Two

folk portraits from the same home are now at the New York Historical

Association in Cooperstown, where they are part of "Empire State Mosaic: The

Folk Art Of New York State."

Two high style Neo-Greco cabinets -- one anonymous, the other by Alexander

Roux -- suggest the preeminence of French style in New York in the 1860s. A

circa 1880 Turkish parlor chair with its original black silk and yellow

needlework upholstery is a rare survival.

Not every object was as well preserved as the Turkish chair. "Many received

minimal conservation -- repairs for minor losses, cleaning, that sort of

thing," D'Ambrosio explains. She worked with textiles specialist Rabbit Goody

to replicate the luscious silk upholstery on a tufted Renaissance Revival

armchair whose cover was worn to shreds. An Eastlake style side chair

retaining just a scrap of its original upholstery was also re-covered, with an

1890s fabric acquired from a specialist.

Organized into four areas covering Neoclasical, Revival, Reform and Innovative

design, "Masterpieces" occupies the second floor of the MWPI's Museum of Art.

"Many pieces were taken out of the period rooms in Fountain Elms. What's great

is that people can see these works anew," the curator notes.

Withheld from the exhibition but included in its catalogue is a carved and

painted cabinet of circa 1870. "We haven't had the funding to conserve it, but

we published it anyway in the hope that it would lead to further research,"

she says. Though from an extended group of imaginatively decorated casepieces,

neither its maker and nor city of manufacture is known.

Observes Kenneth Ames, author of the entry, "What this cabinet may indicate

most clearly is that knowledge of high style Nineteenth Century furniture is

today where knowledge of Eighteenth Century furniture was in about 1920. We

have a general sense of the terrain, but the specifics remain elusive."

D'Ambrosio and her sure-footed colleagues have made significant advances in

mapping one of the last frontiers of decorative arts scholarship. "There are a

lot of avenues of research that are still available," reflects the curator,

who has already begun work on a show of Nineteenth Century metal furniture.

Embracing everything from garden decor to the indoor novelties produced in

Meriden, Conn., the show is set to open in 2003.

Masterpieces of American Furniture From The Munson-Williams-Proctor Institute

can be purchased for $50 from the Institute's gift shop by telephoning

315/797-0000.

Funded by the Henry Luce Foundation and the J.M. Kaplan Fund, among others,

"Masterpieces of American Furniture From The Munson-Williams-Proctor

Institute" will travel to the Cincinnati Art Museum, where it will be on view

from February 18 to May 28, 2000.

The Munson-Williams-Proctor Institute is at 310 Genesee Street in Utica,

telephone 315/797-0000.