Richard L. Annesley and James A Vent formed a partnership in 1885, and transformed their existing business making mirrors to include fine furniture in the Colonial Revival mode at their workshop at 57 N. Pearl in Albany. Other known examples of pier tables from the Annesley firm are part of the collections at the Albany Institute of History and Art and the New York State Museum.

Information courtesy of Neal Auction Company, October 2004.

Born in Boston, John Ritto Penniman came from a talented family, his father was a physician and entrepreneur, and his ten siblings include booksellers, an artist and inventor, and a teacher. Penniman trained as an ornamental painter in Roxbury, Massachusetts, which was, at the time, a community of artisans, including clock and furniture makers. Some of his early work was as a dial painter for noted clockmakers Aaron and Simon Willard.

A Federal work table possibly by Thomas Seymour with paint decoration attributed to Penniman

(p4A item # E8974306)

Penniman later moved to Boston and successfully embedded himself into a network of clock and furniture makers, including Thomas Seymour and John Doggett. He also increased his versatility by expanding his business into carriage and architectural painting, as well as numerous other related fields. He advertised throughout New England:

John R. Penniman… will execute MILITARY STANDARDS, with original designs – CLOCK DIALS for Steeples, and the inside of Public Edifices – MASONIC PAINTING of every description – Designs for Masonic and other Diploma – ORIGINAL VIGNETTES for title pages – Sign & Ornamental Painting, in all their various branches – LANDSCAPE PAINTING – VIEWS OF GENTLEMEN’S SEATS, if required.

By the eighteen-teens, Penniman was also working in prints as a designer for certificates, etc., and he was among the earliest lithographers in the nation. He befriended, and worked for, portraitist Gilbert Stuart, and did aspire to higher forms of art. He did paint a few portraits, including three members of the Willard family of clockmakers.

Penniman’s two major works were large paintings, one on canvas of the Gloucester “sea serpent,” which he sent on tour and was exhibited at Peale’s Museum in Philadelphia. His other, more famous work, was a “transparency” of the Conflagration of the Exchange Coffee House, Boston. The building, designed by Asher Benjamin, burned in 1818, and Penniman depicted this scene on a fifteen by fifteen sheet of oiled paper so that it could be backlit, which, given the subject, must have been a sight to behold. Penniman also executed this scene on canvas, which survives in a private collection (the location of the transparency, or if it even survives, is not known).

Penniman’s Conflagration of the Exchange Coffee House, Boston. This version was painted in 1824.

(p4A item # E8932731)

Penniman’s versatility and artistic success were, unfortunately, marred by a rocky personal and financial life. He was kicked out of the Masons in 1821, allegedly for his excessive drinking. Financial difficulties compelled him, in 1827, to have an auction of his works and supplies. This infusion of cash was apparently not sufficient as Penniman spent time in debtor’s prison, and in 1834, was imprisoned again, this time for printing counterfeit money.

By the late 1830s, Penniman moved to Baltimore, where his son lived, and there died penniless and disgraced in 1841.

The decorative arts world has many “squishy” and vague vocabulary words, but few are “squishier” and vaguer than cartouche. Originally, the term comes from Egyptology and is used to describe a oval enclosing hieroglyphics and having a horizontal line at one end. (The line denotes royalty.) The oval had significance not unlike that of a closed circle, in that it was believed that an oval around a person’s name provided protection to that person. The strong association with the god-like royalty of ancient Egypt and the “good luck charm” nature of the symbol meant that it was eventually co-opted by the rest of the population and, as a result, it appears on all manner of structures and objects from the era.

Centuries later, when Egypt was a land divided constantly by conflicts, soldiers, seeing these ovals everywhere, are said to have found them to resemble the paper cartridges used in muskets. The French word for cartridge is cartouche and thus it became, in its original use, the term applied to this particular hieroglyphic element.

A Civil War-era example of a paper cartridge. (p4A item # D9865000)

Sterling silver vase with blank cartouche. (p4A item # E8906323)

Grisaille, from the French word gris meaning grey, is a term used to describe works of art painted entirely in a monochromatic palette. Technically speaking, there are other terms that apply when the monochromatic palette used is of a different color (brunaille for brown, verdaille for green, for instance), but grisaille is often misused to cover all monochrome works, regardless of hue. There are also plenty of works that are considered grisaille that are not perfectly, strictly speaking, in just one color, but the palette is severely curtailed.

A late 16th to early 17th century painting by Antonio Tempesta (Italian/Florence/Rome, 1555 to 1630) of a cavalry battle en brunaille. (p4A item # D9844979)

Thomas Clarkson Oliver, called Clark Oliver (American, 1827 to 1893) oil on artist board marine painting, Two Ships in a Storm. (p4A item # E8912591)

Examining a piece of furniture is like examining a crime scene – forensics play a role in unraveling puzzles about the who, what, where, when, how of each object. One of the “fingerprints” commonly found in pieces of furniture is the dovetail joint (also known just as dovetail or, in Europe, often called a swallowtail or fantail joint). The photograph here shows the front corner of a drawer in a chest. The chest itself is also dovetailed. While no one really knows how old the dovetail joint is, some of the earliest examples are from pieces found in ancient tombs, both in China and in Egypt.

Dovetails are used in the construction of furniture as well as buildings as joining techniques in a way that offers impressive tensile strength. A dovetailed joint is like interlaced, interlocking fingers. (They’re technically referred to as “pins” and “tails.”) These fingers have a wedge or trapezoidal form and are glued together when finished, meaning an entire piece of furniture – or even an entire log cabin – can be assembled without so much as a single nail!

While most catalogers rarely make the distinction, dovetails can be accomplished in several ways – through, half-blind, secret mitered, sliding and full blind. In specific instances with a large enough body of work to compare, they can link objects to a particular cultural group, a specific shop or even identify the hand of a particular maker. (For instance, English dovetails are often perceived to be finer and more delicate, while Germanic ones tend to be seen as wider and more robust, but even this changes over time and in communities where both populations worked together or other factors influenced the practices of a local shop.)

In the early days of more industrial furniture production, dovetails were still handcut, banged out from templates in the kind of repetitive work that fell to apprentices and journeymen, but by the early 20th century, factories had figured out how to cut dovetail pin and tail wedges with machines. Around this same time, machine-cut joints, fashioned with rectangular pins and tails versus the traditional wedges, began to appear. While occasionally misidentified, these are technically not dovetails, as dovetails draw their very name from their wedge-like resemblance to a bird’s tail, but finger joints.

In the late 14th century, Jan Hus, a Roman Catholic priest in Prague who had been heavily influenced by reformer John Wycliffe, began to attract followers as he spoke out about indulgences (a key practice Martin Luther would attack again in 1517) and his belief that church members should be able, permitted, and encouraged to study the Bible themselves. Hus’s continual agitation would put him at odds with the Catholic Church and in 1415 he would be burned at the stake as a heretic.

Despite this gruesome attempt at silencing them, Hus’s followers were undeterred and remained firm in their conviction that reformation was needed. It would take more than 40 years, but in 1457, they would formally organize themselves as the Unitas Fratrum (United Brethren), simultaneously establishing themselves as one of the first Protestant religions. The political and religious situation in the region was regularly changing, permitting the German-speaking members to worship freely at times and subjecting them to persecution at others, but by the Reformation in 1517, the United Brethren would number 200,000 members with more than 400 houses of worship.

Within a century, turmoil would again make life in the region difficult for the United Brethren, who found themselves suffering from heightened intolerance, driven in part by the Thirty Years’ War (1618-1648), which would conclude with Catholicism becoming the official religion of the region, forcing the remaining members to flee or worship secretly.
The following years were lean ones for the Brethren, who were in fact nearing extinction by the 18th century, until Count Nicholas von Zinzendorf offered them sanctuary on his Saxony estate, an offer he had extended to many persecuted Protestant groups who found themselves under siege. The various groups would collaborate on the construction of Herrnhut, a settlement where all were allowed religious freedom.

The Moravians, as the group had become known by the name of their native region, found favor with Zinzendorf, who felt they would make excellent missionaries with his support. In the mid-18th century, they would travel through Northern Europe, the British Isles, and even into Greenland, spreading their religious beliefs. After a time however, outside political pressure on Zinzendorf lead to renewed persecution and some of the Moravians felt that true religious liberty could only be found in the New World.

A two-sided Moravian fish flask, green-glazed cream-colored earthenware, molded with scales, fins and eyes, attributed to Rudolph Christ, Salem, North Carolina, early 19th century. (p4A item # D9929818)

After a failed start in Georgia, the Moravians moved to Pennsylvania in 1741, purchasing land north of Philadelphia where, again with help from Zinzendorf, they built the Bethlehem commune. Over the next decade the society’s numbers would grow from approximately 20 members to several hundred. From this point of settlement, a community that would become the locus for the Moravians’ missionary efforts in North America, they would go on to develop 32 missions. Perhaps the next best-known settlement is that of Bethabara, which would become the Salem in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, the first of a number of settlements on a huge tract purchased in the Carolinas. The Moravian Church is still in existence today, although the communal nature of their lives, never as tightly restricted as some of the separatist communities by nature of their zeal for evangelism, faded away within just a generation or two.

The communities would operate like many other communes, producing and manufacturing to meet the needs of the immediate community and then cultivating clients in the outside world and using the income to support their missionary work. The Moravians lent their name to a rustic chair that is a fairly standard European “peasant” chair and other furniture linked to them and bearing heavy Germanic influences occasionally appears, but they are by far best known for their pottery, particularly their exuberantly decorated redware and their figural flasks, which can fetch thousands of dollars at auction.