Woodworking Traditio

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University M iarin lrn s International 300 N. Zeeb Road Ann Arbor. Ml 48106 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 1318947 MACKIEWICZ, SUSAN WOODWORKING TRADITIONS IN NEWBURY, MASSACHUSETTS, 1635-1745. UNIVERSITY OF DELAWARE (WINTERTHUR PROGRAM), M.A., 1981 University Microfilms International 300N.Zeeb Road, AnnArbor. MI 48106 Copyright i98i by " MACKIEWICZ, SUSAN All Rights Reserved Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. PLEASE NOTE: In all cases this material has been filmed in the best possible way from the available copy. Problems encountered with this document have been Identified here with a check mark V . 1. Glossy photographs or pages S 2. 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Further reproduction prohibited without permission. WOODWORKING TRADITIONS IN NEWBURY, MASSACHUSETTS, 1635-1745 By Susan Mackiewicz A thesis submitted to the Faculty of the University of Delaware in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Early American Culture. August 1981 Copyright Susan Mackiewicz 1981 All Rights Reserved Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. WOODWORKING TRADITIONS IN NEWBURY, MASSACHUSETTS, 1635-1745 BY Susan Mackiewicz Approved: Richard L. Bushman", ~ Ph .'D' Professor in charge of thesis on behalf of the Advisory Committee Approved: Bei Professor in charge of thesis on behalf of the Advisory Committee Stephanie G . Wolf, 'Ph . D . 7^ Coordinator of the Early American Culture Program Approved: R. B. Murray, Ph.D. University Coordinator for Graduate Studies Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. PREFACE This thesis is an analysis of woodworking traditions in Newbury, Massachusetts from 1635 to 1745. Seventeenth-century furniture studies usually focus on joiners as the first furniture makers of note in a community, yet an investigation of extant Essex County Court records provided no evidence of an initial joinery tradition in Newbury. Although West country Englishmen settled the town in 1635, no joiner resided there until 1677, more than forty years after the town's founding. During these forty years, it seems unlikely that Newbury freeholders went to Ipswich or Salem for every piece of furniture they needed. Since the town lacked joiners, another woodworker supplied a portion of the community's wants. Three of the first settlers were iii Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. iv carpenters, which implies that carpenters were the first furniture makers in the town. The presence of carpenters and absence of joiners necessitated a reappraisal of woodworking traditions to ascertain why a town only eight miles from Ipswich, Massachusetts, the home of the Dennis-Searle joinery school, failed to support a similar seventeenth-century joinery tradition. Yet, in the early eighteenth century, Newbury boasted one of the first joiners to work in the William and Mary style. An examination of the cultural, social, and economic context in which the craftsmen operated explains the changing woodworking traditions of seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century Newbury. A review of the literature devoted to American furniture shows that furniture historians have moved gradually away from a study of personalities to an understanding of the complex dynamics between craftsman and community. Initially, historical associations preoccupied the furniture historians. Furniture was as significant as its most prominent owner. Thus the Carver chair, the Brewster chair, and the Governor Wint'nrop desk became terms bandied about by the earliest furniture historians. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. V In 1891, Irving W. Lyon elevated early American furniture from this antiquarian bias to the level of a serious discipline with Colonial Furniture of New England■^ Taking his cue from such European furniture scholars as Henry Havard and J. Hungerford Pollen, Lyon established the fundamentals of American furniture history by relying on careful research of documentary evidence and critical evaluation of the artifacts. This artifactual emphasis moved furniture historians away from owner- glorification towards the study of furniture making in its own right. Luke Vincent Lockwood's concern for provenance and maker attributions continued the new direction initiated by Lyon. In the Metropolitan Museum Bulletin (May 1923), Lockwood published a Hadley-type chest inscribed "Mary Allyns Chistt Cutte and Joyned by Nich. 2 Disbrowe." Lockwood's discussion of the Disbrowe chest's relationship to other floral carved chests addresses, for the first time, the concept of regional styles as a manifestation of shared design sources by a group of joiners. Lockwood's regional approach has dominated Essex County furniture studies. In 1937 and 1938, Irving P. Lyon's series of six articles on the seventeenth-century Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. vi oak furniture of Ipswich, Massachusetts used stylistic analysis to isolate a major body of Essex County 3 furniture. While Lyon succeeded in assembling a regional group, his zeal to identify a maker overrode his discretion as a connoisseur. He attributed the entire group to the hand of one joiner, Thomas Dennis. The controversy generated by Lyon's work led to a more sophisticated understanding of Essex County craftsmanship. In "Dennis or a Lessor Light?," Homer 4 Eaton Keyes challenged Lyon's wholesale attributions. Noting the stylistic dissimilarities of the "Small Panel" type to the rest of the group, Keyes argued that a craftsman's apprenticeship limited his repertoire of learned forms and patterns. Keyes concluded that Dennis could not have been the sole maker of such a diverse body of Essex County furniture. The logic of Keyes was reasonable, but he lacked the empirical proof to resolve the issue with finality. His rebuttal forced scholars to reevaluate Essex County furniture, in an effort to arrive at a methodology which separated the work of an individual within a regional group. The theories of Keyes remained unproved until I960, when Helen Park published new findings on the Ipswich

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