These turnings are so impressive, but my favorite remains the Currier Gallery cupboard. I was extremely annoyed that when the Currier commissioned a study of the cupboard from Mussey Associates, they used our notes line-for-line without citing them. I also pointed out in their preliminary report that they had flipped the photo of the cupboard side-to-side. 95% of their "new" conclusions came from our notes. The only things they found were by either Xray or intrusive disassembly, which we could not do. The other thing we did not do was get paid.
Well, we had given them the notes before when an institution had offered to buy the cupboard from the Currier. For decades, the cupboard had been on loan at Historical Society of Old Newbury, where a parade of "experts" had said it was "all messed up." It isn't. In fact, it has one of the most intact arrays of the best turnings by that shop tradition. It simply was provided with a Gothic arcade door in the Federal period, and the drawers were relined, but you can still see the kerfs from where the old, thick linings were. It could, plausibly, be tuned up without major intrusive work. But a group of arch-conservative advisors, including Phil Zea and Jane Newlander, ruled against it. Maybe twenty years from now.
For better and worse, each generation has a particular lane they are more or less stuck in. In furniture and the decorative arts the generations last a long while. Nutting is still an influence.
But the younger people are trained better than their predecessors, which is as it should be. May be, twenty years from now.
Sorry, that's Jane Nylander. You can see a spectacular result of a restoration executed using information provided by all three authors, Alan Miller, Peter Follansbee, and me, in the 2001 issue of American Furniture. That cupboard was in the Godfrey Collection in Milwaukee, now at Chipstone Foundation.
These turnings are so impressive, but my favorite remains the Currier Gallery cupboard. I was extremely annoyed that when the Currier commissioned a study of the cupboard from Mussey Associates, they used our notes line-for-line without citing them. I also pointed out in their preliminary report that they had flipped the photo of the cupboard side-to-side. 95% of their "new" conclusions came from our notes. The only things they found were by either Xray or intrusive disassembly, which we could not do. The other thing we did not do was get paid.
That's really crappy.
Well, we had given them the notes before when an institution had offered to buy the cupboard from the Currier. For decades, the cupboard had been on loan at Historical Society of Old Newbury, where a parade of "experts" had said it was "all messed up." It isn't. In fact, it has one of the most intact arrays of the best turnings by that shop tradition. It simply was provided with a Gothic arcade door in the Federal period, and the drawers were relined, but you can still see the kerfs from where the old, thick linings were. It could, plausibly, be tuned up without major intrusive work. But a group of arch-conservative advisors, including Phil Zea and Jane Newlander, ruled against it. Maybe twenty years from now.
For better and worse, each generation has a particular lane they are more or less stuck in. In furniture and the decorative arts the generations last a long while. Nutting is still an influence.
But the younger people are trained better than their predecessors, which is as it should be. May be, twenty years from now.
Sorry, that's Jane Nylander. You can see a spectacular result of a restoration executed using information provided by all three authors, Alan Miller, Peter Follansbee, and me, in the 2001 issue of American Furniture. That cupboard was in the Godfrey Collection in Milwaukee, now at Chipstone Foundation.