Cincinnati and the Decorative Arts the Foundations
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CINCINNATI ART-CARVED FURNITURE AND INTERIORS 1 Cincinnati and the Decorative Arts The Foundations Robert C. Vitz “ regard him as an English fop who has come ware when he visited the two-year-old pottery, and Iover to make money and is succeeding. He tries he completely ignored local art furniture. How- to act like the fool but he isn’t one.”1 The subject ever, his public lectures on household decoration was Oscar Wilde (1854–1900), a leading exponent stimulated much discussion about the role of the of English Aestheticism, who was visiting Cincin- decorative arts in an expanding industrial age. nati as part of an extended tour that kept him in While the city’s major newspapers covered his two the United States for almost all of 1882 and part of lectures and took great delight in describing his 1883. Although preceded by considerable publicity, clothes and mannerisms, design-conscious Cin- much of it mocking in nature, the twenty-seven- cinnatians, already familiar with the Ruskinian year-old Wilde viewed the city as just another stop ideals espoused by Wilde, applauded his appear- on a lecture tour that stretched from New York to ances but found little new in his public comments. San Francisco. To many Cincinnatians, however, For his part, Wilde apparently knew little about the arrival of the lamboyant Irish poet and aes- the city’s recent successes in the production of dec- thete was an event of considerable distinction, for orative objects and condescendingly dismissed the the Queen City took great pride in its reputation city as provincial.2 as an art center, and especially in its recent accom- Few cities could rival Cincinnati in the emo- plishments in carved furniture and art pottery. tional energy it invested in its cultural reputation Although Wilde commended the city’s most following the Civil War, and many of its artistic versatile decorative artist, M. Louise McLaughlin leaders found inspiration in the English Aes- (1847–1939), for her recent book, Pottery Decoration thetic movement. At the movement’s center was under the Glaze, he did not think much of Rookwood John Ruskin (1819–1900), whose proli0c writings 3 reached across the Atlantic. Ruskin advocated a women, relected this connection, and while the return to a “craftsman ideal” that would restore movement opened vocational possibilities for the values of a preindustrial, organic society. He women, it also built upon traditional female roles argued that industrialization had separated work as guardians of the home and arbiters of taste. In from creativity, leaving the laborer spiritually other words, it did open some doors, but at the damaged and alienated from society. A restora- same time it reinforced a traditional gender divi- tion of the decorative arts, which Ruskin raised to sion of labor.4 the level of the 0ne arts, would reconnect art with Ruskin’s views spread across the United States labor and result in a more harmonious society. through his writings and through the inluence Proper design encouraged good workmanship and of such disciples as Harvard professor Charles a more productive worker. In turn, a transforma- Eliot Norton and, in Cincinnati, three English tion in the nature of work would improve working immigrants—Benn Pitman (1822–1910), Henry L. conditions and alleviate the worst social conditions Fry (1807–1895), and his son, William H. (1830– associated with industrialization. The bleakness 1929). From these beginnings came Cincinnati of Charles Dickens’s world would be relegated to art furniture, which can be de0ned, in short, as the past.3 hand-carved furniture and architectural adorn- Ruskin and his followers turned to medieval ments that relected the ideals of Ruskin. Between England for inspiration. They found in Gothic 1868 and about 1890 Cincinnati supported a highly design the proper combination of aesthetic form, successful art-furniture movement that was part of religious feeling, moral substance, and practical a more general enthusiasm for all the arts during function. To reunite the useful and the beautiful the last third of the nineteenth century. Cincin- became their goal, and to achieve this end, society nati lowered as a regional cultural center and, at required fundamental changes. Ruskin argued for least in the decorative arts, as a national arts cen- personal responsibility in the emerging realm ter. To understand how this came about, one must of mass consumption. Individuals must educate look to the city’s early economic and artistic de- themselves in the principles of good design and velopment. use that education to exert pressure on the manu- Founded in 1788 on a sweeping bend of the facturing process. Thus, the Aesthetic movement, Ohio River, Cincinnati had become, by 1830, the both in Great Britain and the United States, aimed leading economic and cultural center in the trans- at preserving craft skills until society could re- Appalachian West. Tied to a vast inland river form itself. Ruskin assumed that beauty carried system that had been supplemented by the con- moral precepts and that a restoration of beauty, struction of canals during the second quarter of or proper design, would encourage people to be- the nineteenth century, the city served both as an come more virtuous. In that light, a house was not important location for commercial shipping and only an individual’s castle but a moral foundation, as the supplier of manufactured goods for a rap- a sanctuary from the social ills associated with the idly developing region. At any time of year scores industrial city. On a more personal level, the move- of latboats and steamboats could be found docked ment provided an expanding and troubled middle along the river, and the public landing, teeming class with a set of rules for home decoration—rules with people, would be 0lled with crates and boxes, that linked beauty, nature, spiritual values, and the barrels of pork, mounds of rags to be turned into family. At the center of these interlocking con- newsprint, piles of tanned hides, and stacks of cepts were women. A host of organizations, clubs, lumber. books, and art magazines, largely targeted toward Best known as a meatpacking center, Cincin- cincinnati art-carved furniture and interiors 4 nati also boasted of its production of whiskey, beer, kamp, and Jacob Deterly.8 Dr. Daniel Drake, the boilers and valves, ironwork, agricultural machin- community’s preeminent physician and booster, ery, carriages and wagons, lour, boots and shoes, in his promotional work of 1815, Natural and Statis- clothing of all types, and a variety of paper prod- tical View, or Picture of Cincinnati and the Miami Country, ucts. By the end of the 1820s the city recorded noted the production of “many diferent articles imports of $3.8 million and exports of $3.1 mil- of jewelry, and silver ware of every sort.”9 Scarcity lion, relecting its strong commercial and manu- of precious metals undoubtedly limited output, facturing economy.5 Visitors were amazed at this but most of these men also produced watches. rapid development. In 1829 one observer com- John Holland, who later made 0ne gold pens; mented that “the sight of [Cincinnati] 0lled one Joseph Jonas; and Gamaliel Bailey, father of the with astonishment—I could not have imagined . editor of the Cincinnati Philanthropist, all managed to anything like it . either as to the extent or the make a living producing watches and other pieces style and magni0cence of its buildings.” Three of jewelry. Three brothers, Enos, Osman, and years later the recently arrived James Hall, former William Sellew, produced a variety of tin plate, jurist and now writer of Western stories, declared pewter ware, and copper products,10 while Luman that “strangers, with scarce an exception, are struck Watson was the city’s most proli0c clockmaker dur- upon walking through Cincinnati, with the ap- ing the 0rst half of the century.11 parent age and 0nish of the place; with the taste Most important of the crafted items, from shown in the construction of private houses; with a commercial perspective, was furniture. Nearby the appearance of wealth, cultivation, and polish.”6 hardwood forests supplied an abundance of oak, Horace Greeley, publisher of the New York Tribune, maple, poplar, walnut, and cherry, which crafts- predicted that the city would become “the focus men turned into cabinets, beds, chairs, and sofas. and mart for the grandest circle of manufactur- Perhaps the 0rst evidence of the frontier village’s ing thrift on this continent,”7 and local boosters future as a furniture center is found in the 1795 made even more extravagant remarks. By mid- advertisement for “a Journeyman or two, who century “the Queen City,” a name popularized by understand Cabinet Making.”12 Just 0ve years later, a Henry Wadsworth Longfellow poem written to Lyon & McGinnis were producing “Escritoires, honor the Catawba wine produced by business- dining and breakfast tables, clock cases, Veneered, man and art patron Nicholas Longworth, had the inlaid and plain.”13 To make ends meet, these early sixth largest population in the nation, with ambi- furniture makers did a multitude of tasks, includ- tions of surging even higher. ing glazing, general carpentry, and repairing, but Included among Cincinnati’s products were after 1815 rising demand permitted more special- many that required the services of skilled crafts- ization. Drake commented on the production of men. As be0tted the largest western city, young “sideboards, secretaries, bureaus, and other arti- men came to Cincinnati seeking opportunities. cles of cabinet furniture,” as well as “Fancy chairs Silversmiths, clockmakers, jewelers, engravers, and and settees, elegantly gilt and varnished.”14 By the other artisans helped establish a solid founda- start of the century’s third decade, more than a tion for decorative household items.