The Murphy Room. Historical context:

Transcription

1 The Murphy Room Historical context: The 17 th century can be a challenging era for visitors to understand. Popular culture has left Americans with images, all mythical, of tall-hatted Pilgrims disembarking on Plymouth Rock and witches afire at the stake. It can be more helpful to think of this period as America s first frontier. Settlements in the earliest years barely clung to survival, threatened by starvation, Indian wars, and dissension both locally and at home in England. An English child born in the first year of settlement in Virginia, if he lived through the rest of the century, would have known eight different rulers and only three changes of government that took place through normal succession. England s improvised, barely-supervised approach to settlement differed from the colonial enterprises of France and Spain, which were closely managed by absolute monarchies for the benefit of the crown. On the American continent, settlement took place through a patchwork of commercial and religious enterprises Puritans in Massachusetts and Connecticut, Protestant dissenters in Rhode Island, Quakers in Pennsylvania, Catholics in Maryland, Dutch traders in New York, Englishmen in search of profit in Virginia and the Carolinas. The chaos eventually evolved into a more structured society, containing within itself the seeds of both America s particular strengths, like local self-government, and weaknesses like entrenched slavery. But the colonists we imagine sitting in the great chairs, eating from the dishes, and folding treasured fabrics into the chests housed in the Murphy Room should be envisioned not as the prosperous merchants, artisans, and farmers their children and grandchildren would become but as pioneers scratching out colonies in the face of threats external and internal, and with no foreknowledge that their efforts would succeed.

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3 Cultural context: The seventeenth century colonist s worldview was quite different from modern Americans. We are still English. In this era, there was no special collective identity for residents of the American colonies. Instead, they would identify themselves as Englishmen or Englishwomen who happened to live on the western side of the Atlantic, just as a Texan or New Yorker may continue that self-identification wherever he or she resides. Colonists brought with them English tastes and training in producing English-style goods, and while local materials and circumstances might affect the results, the intention was to imitate what they knew. And in fact, much of what colonists owned was produced in England. While furniture and silver might be locally made, fine textiles, ceramics, glass and other goods that required complex manufacturing enterprises would have been imported. Hierarchy, structure and authority were very important. Every person existed within a network of authority, responsible to some and, in many cases, in authority over others. Although the question of exactly how this hierarchy worked could become contentious (witness the English Civil War), the general idea was accepted as the natural state of being. Parents had authority over children, masters over apprentices, servants or slaves, husbands over wives, and whites over non-whites, and those in power had responsibilities to their subordinates as well. Homes and possessions expressed these values in objects like a great chair, occupied by the head of the family or most honored guest. Today we seldom lock a closet or storage furniture in our homes, and doing so is regarded with suspicion by other family members (except perhaps at Christmas!) In early America, however, homes were shared by a variety of people who might or might not have the trust of the heads of the household. Access to locked areas reflected one s place in the hierarchy of the family. But No man is an island. At the same time that Americans of the 1600s were sorted by their place in a hierarchy, they also occupied a world where the modern expectation of privacy did not yet exist. Rooms were shared by multiple people engaged in a variety of simultaneous activities. People did not expect their own beds, dishes, or, according to James Deetz, their own individual graves. In fact, they would have considered it lonely, or a mark of ostracism, not to have a share in communal objects and spaces. As an example, the dishes seen on the central table might have been shared by two people during a meal. We like being artificial. Today, artificial is a pejorative and modern society praises people or things that are all-natural. In contrast, seventeenth-century Americans, particularly Puritans, regarded nature with deep suspicion. Whether the stormy ocean they had crossed, the forests whose people and animals, they believed, were intent on killing them, or the land which had to be subdued before it would feed their families, nature was something to be

4 struggled against, not embraced. Artificer, as a synonym for craftsman, represented someone who had taken raw materials and with God-given talents turned them into something better and more useful. Many scholars believe that the stylized ornament preferred in the period, on the Hadley chest and wainscot chair for instance, reflects this perspective on nature. The past is another country; they do things differently there. Keeping in mind the cultural context already discussed, it is no surprise that seventeenth-century settlers had very different ideas from today about what constituted a comfortable and well-furnished home. Except for the homes of the very wealthiest, houses were quite small. The floor space of the Murphy Room is similar to the footprint of a typical 17 th century house with two rooms on the first floor. Some homes were even smaller, having only a hall where cooking, eating, work and sleeping all took place. Wealthier families might also have a parlor on the first floor, where guests were entertained and where the best bedstead and other fine goods were kept. Families also owned less than we might expect, even well-off households. In the Chesapeake, only 1 out of 3 households owned either a chair or bench, and only one-seventh of households owned both. The most expensive and treasured items were likely to be imported textiles, not the furniture we value today. Pewter was used by the more comfortable for eating and drinking (with a few silver and glass pieces for the wealthiest) and woodenware for the poor, with ceramics being reserved mainly for dairying and serving dishes. Forks were not yet in common use.

5 Design and craft context: As mentioned above, American design preferences in the seventeenth century (described as 17 th Century or Mannerist in design histories) strongly imitated English taste a natural result given the English origins of both customers and craftsmen in the first generations of colonists. Design preferences also reflect the favored materials and craft techniques of the era, including, for furniture, the taste for oak as the most fashionable wood for case furniture and the primary use of the mortise and tenon joint for construction. Visitors will notice that the objects in the Murphy Room tend to be low, heavy and horizontally oriented, contrasting with the more delicate and vertical objects in the Pine Room. Case furniture (chests and cupboards) often looks like small buildings, and in fact the same joiners (woodworkers) might have worked on both kinds of projects. Furniture often incorporated elements turned on a lathe, either as structural members or ornamentally. Some craftsmen were both joiners and turners; others specialized in one area of woodworking. Although American design was based on English precedent, American woodworkers faced very different conditions than their English counterparts. England s wood supply had been mostly exhausted, and woodworkers relied heavily on expensive imports for raw materials. In contrast, Americans had access to ample and cheap wood supplies in their own home regions. On the other hand, labor was expensive. Particularly in the early years, trained craftsmen were in short supply and their time was valuable. So Americans often relied on techniques that were fast but wasteful for instance, riving (splitting) wood instead of sawing it, or leaving unseen surfaces unfinished. Decoration tends to be geometric or abstract rather than imitating nature closely; it is contained within specific spaces like the panels on a chest or the lobes on a silver cup. In furniture-making, two major forms of decoration were carving, as seen on the wainscot chair or Hadley chest, and applied decoration (bosses, split spindles) as in the Boston cupboard. Many scholars argue that this preference for abstract, geometric design derives from Mannerism, a northern European interpretation of Italian Renaissance style. Unfortunately, we are missing one of the important aspects of 17 th -century furniture color. Many wooden objects were originally brightly painted in red, white, black, green and yellow. (Blue was rarer because the pigments for blue paint were much more expensive.) Most of these painted finishes have been lost to wear and, in some cases, to restoration efforts that did not understand the original appearance of the furniture. In addition, the oak favored for case pieces

6 and the maple and birch often used in turned furniture were originally light in color, darkening over time with exposure to smoky fires and the oils from users hands. Restored cupboard with drawers, Museum of Fine Arts Boston. Note the contrast between the new and old wood, and the brightness of the paint.

7 Specific objects: Room displays at Bayou Bend are constantly evolving; new objects are acquired, and as one of America s best decorative arts collections, we often lend to other museums. However, here are some objects which are frequently found in the room which may be of interest to visitors. Monteith bowl (B.59.69): Given its bright color and unusual form, it s not surprising that the monteith bowl (English, approximately 1690) catches many visitors eyes. According to Winterthur Museum s Uncorked exhibition, Monteiths, filled with cool water or ice, were used for chilling wine bottles and cooling or rinsing wine glasses; the latter were inverted and hung from the notched rim. The monteith is made of tin-glazed earthenware and was produced in England, probably the London area. Blue and white wares imitating highly desirable Chinese porcelains were popular. Westerners did not yet know how to manufacture porcelain for themselves, but mimicked the style with various wares. Fine ceramics like this object would have been imported to the American colonies, which could not yet sustain the complicated businesses needed to produce them. Hadley chest (B ): Against the wall between the two windows stands a chest with a carved pattern on the front. This design tells us that it was most likely made in western Massachusetts near the Connecticut River. Chests of this kind are often referred to as Hadley chests after a town in the area. The pattern of leaves, tulips and vines was very popular in that area in the early 1700s, where it was used by a number of craftsmen. In addition, it was probably decorated with bright-colored paint which has now been lost. Although today chests like these are very highly valued by collectors, in the early 1700s it would have been the textiles stored inside that were of greatest worth. Imported textiles would often be the most expensive thing a family owned. Many of these chests have initials or names on them; ours is marked with M. A. but we don t know to whom that referred. It may very well have been a woman. Many of the chests of this type were documented as belonging to women; women frequently received their share of a family estate in movables or furnishings, either as a wedding gift or an inheritance.

8 Wainscot chair (B.94.11): One of the rarest survivals in the Murphy Room is the joined great chair, or wainscot chair. Relatively few of these chairs are documented in 17 th century wills and inventories, and Bayou Bend was not able to acquire one for the collection until the 1990s. Made of panels assembled with mortiseand-tenon joints, the chair represents the work of the joiner s trade. Joined chairs took longer to make and were more expensive than the turned chairs also seen in the room. Most chairs like this would have been padded with a loose cushion (not attached to the chair) filled with down or other soft materials. Visitors may particularly notice that the carving in the top panel of the chair is off-center. Another interesting detail is the initials carved into the crest rail and arms. We do not know when during the chair s 350-year history the initials made their appearance, but they are a good reminder that our collection objects have not always been regarded as precious museum pieces. Portrait of Ebenezer Coffin, Nehemiah Partridge (B.63.75): Portraits were not just a way to capture a person s likeness in the era before photographers, but also to send messages about that person. Ebenezer Coffin was a member of a prominent shipping family from Nantucket. In the background, we see a sailing ship that may represent his family s livelihood. On his left hip he wears a sword, showing that he is a man of fashion and wealth. In his right hand he holds a letter or paper. This may refer to his stature as a businessman who worked with a pen instead of his hands. It may also reflect his status as a man of education who could not just read, which was almost universal among New England men, but also write, which was more unusual. The portrait is believed to have been painted around 1720 by Nehemiah Partridge, who traveled the American colonies working as an artist. His mobility was not unusual in his field; no one city had enough clients to provide a full-time living for a working portraitist.

9 Bayou Bend context (adapted from 1994 room essay): The area that the Murphy Room occupies was originally divided into four spaces a Tap Room or Game Room, kitchen, coatroom and bath in the East Wing or Bachelor s Quarters. In its earliest incarnation, it was furnished with simple Americana pieces like Windsor chairs and hooked rugs. According to the room file, the space was used to display Texana in the 1940s. The room as it is known now, with the purpose of showcasing the collection s earliest objects, was reinstalled in 1959 and represents Miss Hogg s first effort at creating a museum interior. At that point Miss Hogg had established strong ties to other major collectors of American decorative arts. Both John Staub and John Graham of Colonial Williamsburg collaborated with Miss Hogg on the reinstallation, but she was most strongly influenced by fellow collector and friend, Katharine Prentis Murphy. Mrs. Murphy and Miss Hogg had known each other about eight years when the Murphy Room reinstallation took place. According to a reminiscence in Miss Hogg s papers, their first meeting was rather unsuccessful; invited to dinner at Mrs. Murphy s home, Ima Hogg and her companion became lost in the Connecticut countryside and arrived well after the home-cooked dinner was ruined. Over a restaurant meal the evening was salvaged and a long friendship began. Many visual motifs and aesthetic combinations appear in the nineteen rooms which Katharine Prentis Murphy created for the New Hampshire Historical Society, the New York Historical Society, Shelburne and other museums as well as in Bayou Bend s Murphy Room. The woodwork was based on a ca Connecticut interior which Mrs. Murphy had given to the New Hampshire Historical Society. Mrs. Murphy delighted in the combination of blue and white delftwares, 17 th Century and William and Mary furnishings with high arching curves, a black and white stenciled floor, and gleaming pewter and brass. The black-and-white floor was inspired by Boston portraits of the 1670s which probably represented painted floorcloths, rather than painted floors. Although Ima Hogg was bedridden during much of the renovation process, she kept careful track of the details through the staff and made regular progress

10 reports to Mrs. Murphy via letter. Her letters also include warm thanks for the many gifts made by Mrs. Murphy to the room, which included the pewter candlestick (B ), the English brass lantern clock (B ), and several pieces of tin-glazed earthenware. Following the dedication, Miss Hogg wrote that she had a great sense of relief that you were able to come down and see your room christened. Your complete cooperation and wonderful taste are responsible for such a beautiful room. The clock ticks away as a sort of sentinel for all the things you placed there. In 1960 Miss Hogg wrote of the Murphy Room that it was created in homage to one of the pioneers in American collecting, who is a great inspiration and benefactress to many museums. Mrs. Murphy is also a member of same group of distinguished collectors who in recent years have given encouragement and impetus to my own aspirations.

11 Bibliography: Deetz, James. In Small Things Forgotten: [an Archaeology of Early American Life]. New York: Anchor Books, Fairbanks, Jonathan L., and Robert Trent. New England Begins: The Seventeenth Century. Boston: Museum of Fine Arts, Forman, Benno M. American Seating Furniture, : An Interpretive Catalogue. New York: W.W. Norton, Hawke, David Freeman. Everyday Life in Early America. New York: Harper & Row, Jobe, Brock, Myrna Kaye, and Philip Zea. New England Furniture: The Colonial Era : Selections from the Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, Krill, Rosemary Troy. Early American Decorative Arts, A Handbook for Interpreters. Lanham, Md: AltaMira Press, Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York, N.Y.), Frances Gruber Safford, Morrison H. Heckscher, and Mary-Alice Rogers. American Furniture in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York: The Museum, 1985.