YOUTH AND EARLY CAREER, 1767–1804

Isaac Vose was born the same year as Brooks, 1767, in Milton, also a small rural town, located ten miles south of Boston. He was among the many artisans drawn by increasing opportunities to move to New England’s capital city from outlying areas. The most talented prospered when men like Brooks, and their fashion-conscious wives, met their perceived obligations to purchase and display the latest styles.

Isaac was born to Samuel Vose (1730–1804) and his wife, Sarah (née Kenney) (1732–1777), of nearby Stoughton. He was a sixth-generation descendant of Robert Vose (Vause), who had migrated to Milton from England sometime between 1650 and 1668.4 Isaac’s earliest years were spent at his father’s inn, the Rising Sun, close to the Neponset River and the various mills at Milton Falls; the river divided the northern end of Milton from Dorchester. Isaac’s mother died when he was ten. His father then remarried, to the widow Katherine (Bullard) Wadsworth, and moved to her former husband’s farm in the southern part of Milton.5 Presumably, Isaac was bound as apprentice cabinetmaker around age fourteen. One possible master is cabinetmaker Nathaniel Bemis of Watertown, oldest brother of Vose’s future wife, Mary Bemis.6 Vose maintained extensive ties throughout his life with the extended Bemis clan and other merchants and mill owners in Watertown. A second possibility is William Wadsworth, a Milton cabinetmaker and probably Vose’s older stepbrother.7

The first record of Vose as an independent cabinetmaker is in the records of the Hollis Street Church in the South End neighborhood of Boston (fig. 2).8 After a fire destroyed the old church in 1787, the congregation employed the aspiring young architect Charles Bulfinch to design a new one, his first commission after returning from a tour through Europe.9 Leading Boston carvers John and Simeon Skillin were paid £66.7.11 for “festoons” on the breastwork of the galleries and “fluted pillars of the Corinthian order.”10 Twenty-two-year-old Isaac Vose billed the church in 1789 for the smallest of all commissions, charging “twelve Shillings, it being for four Contribution boxes.”11 Vose was thus in on the ground floor at the introduction of the neoclassical styles that would dominate in Boston throughout his career.

The Hollis Street Church would prove to be a central focus throughout Vose’s life. Its members came from the entire South End and became Vose’s patrons, business partners, employees, or subcontractors. Some became family to Vose through marriage. Caleb Davis (1738–1797), a long-time deacon and building committee member for the new church, was a wealthy South End merchant and distiller who purchased furniture and repair work from the young cabinetmaker. In 1791, Davis’s order totaling a modest £2.8.0 included a bedstead, a “light-stand [candlestand] top,” “working on a bookcase, bedstead and chair,” “mending a knife case,” and purchase of a pair of “lifting handles.”12

In 1784, the town of Boston was destitute and desperate for increased income to pay off huge wartime debts. Caleb Davis was appointed a member of a Boston Selectman’s Committee to explore increasing tax revenues through granting development rights to the northern portion of Boston Neck. The Neck was a long isthmus barely one hundred yards wide at the northern end that connected the peninsula of Boston to the mainland.13 Davis’s committee recommended a plan to the selectmen by which fourteen pairs of lots would be granted to an association of South End merchant-partners. The development was finally approved in 1786, and after prolonged negotiations, deeds were granted in 1788.14 These became known as the “Fourteen Hundred Foot Lots.” Each pair of lots faced each other across the main road that was renamed Washington Street. Although Davis had been on the town’s committee recommending the development, in 1787 he purchased the northernmost pair of lots, designated as “number one,” from his brother Nathaniel, an original proprietor.15 This appears to have been a “sweetheart” deal, with his brother acting as straw man in the original purchase.

By 1790, Isaac Vose began renting the westerly lot of Davis’s pair (fig. 3). Tax records describe his leasehold as a “Joyner Shop on Boston Neck.”16 The next year, the assessor recorded “Shop. Cabinet Maker boards. Langfords,” indicating that no associated house was yet on the lot. Two years later, two apprentices or journeymen of voting age (one “gone”), “one house,” and “one shop within” were listed. The assessors’ entry in 1793 confirms Vose’s location with the comment “Cabnet Mr. 1^st on the Neck.”17 Another original proprietor, the merchant and Hollis Street Church member William Dall, built his fashionable house directly across the street from Vose and rented out a store just to the south.

At a young age, Vose showed talent for securing patronage from elite customers. The wealthy merchant Joseph Barrell of Charlestown hired him five times between May 1790 and December 1791, including for “sundry Cabinetwork,” probably for Barrell’s grand new country house “Pleasant Hill,” designed by Charles Bulfinch.18 By 1794, Vose was also working for prominent merchant Stephen Salisbury of Worcester, whose future wife, Elizabeth, was the daughter of Vose’s South End neighbor and fellow church member Edward Tuckerman.19

By 1792, Vose had become successful enough to purchase two pieces of property: farmland in Milton adjacent to his father’s farm and the lot on Washington Street he had been renting from Caleb Davis.20 How was the young cabinetmaker able to acquire the substantial sum of £104 for these purchases? It appears that the money came largely as a dowry paid in advance by his soon-to-be wife, Mary Bemis of Watertown. Just twelve days before Vose’s first property purchase in April, Mary had inherited her first £100 portion due from her father David’s estate.21 Vose had already built his shop and added his house on the Neck property that same year. In 1798, this property was described as having lumber storage (588 sq. ft.), a workshop (800 sq. ft.), and a three-story house (800 sq. ft., with 22 windows), substantial for a young man.22 On December 19, 1792, six months after his purchase of the lot, Isaac Vose and Mary Bemis were married in Watertown.23

AN ENDURING PARTNERSHIP: VOSE & COATES, 1804–1815

No account book, waste book, or letters survive for Vose, nor has any of Vose’s furniture from his first seventeen working years (before 1807) been identified. But a detailed picture of his early life can be assembled from diverse documents. It is clear that he continued to gain clients of wealth and social standing. He made three beds in 1798 for John Codman, Esq., including “1 large bedstead with oppen work sides $10.50 . . . [and] 2 sett teasters” for these, painted green.24 John Sprague, Esq., placed an order for unspecified “Cabinet Work” totaling $21.18 in 1795.25 Throughout the 1790s, Vose purchased a variety of yard goods from wealthy merchant John Amory and the firm of Cutler and Amory.26

Vose boarded his increasing numbers of apprentices and some journeymen in his house from 1793 through 1806.27 Voting “Polls” enumerated at his property grew from two in 1792, to four in 1794, and six in 1800, although the numbers fluctuated. For several of the years between 1795 and 1803, Vose’s younger brother Stephen worked for him as journeyman cabinetmaker, later as mahogany purchasing agent.28 A few of Vose’s journeymen in these early years went on to become noted tradesmen.29 However, most of Vose’s workers labored on in obscurity, working a year or two before moving on to other shops in Boston or other cities.

Immigrant William Piquot (Pico, Peco, Pequot) was a prominent exception, working for Vose as journeyman cabinetmaker for most of the years from 1803 to 1825.30 Piquot was born in France, one of only four furniture craftsmen from that country identified as living and working in Ward 12 from 1789 to 1830.31 Boston had long been “anti-Papist,” sentiments reinforced by Federalist fears of Jacobins during the French Revolution. Piquot’s twenty-three-year tenure with Vose was extremely rare for this period of fluid changes in the trade.32

Joshua Coates’s (1774–1819) twenty-one-year tenure was only slightly shorter. A native of Darlington, County Durham, Great Britain, he was first recorded in 1798 as a journeyman cabinetmaker working for Vose.33 By 1805, they had allied as partners, working as Vose & Coates.34 Their partnership endured until the latter’s death in Boston in 1819, far longer than Boston’s typical one- or two-year alliances.35

Vose’s patrons from the upper ranks of merchants and professional men multiplied. Peter Chardon Brooks was not alone in the accumulation of fortunes, although his was among the largest. David Sears Sr., Nathan and Samuel Appleton, Benjamin Bussey, Edward Tuckerman, Samuel Parkman, Elisha Ticknor, and Samuel Eliot were also showing a Midas touch in a variety of mercantile pursuits. All later became Vose’s patrons. His fortunes increased as theirs did, though on a smaller scale.

As the number of children born to Vose and his wife, Mary, increased, the number of journeymen and apprentices he could board in his home decreased.36 Beginning about 1800, tax records identify many of them as living in houses or tenements owned by William Dall, who was to become a business partner and associate of Vose. These included rear extensions to Dall’s own house at Lot No. 2 East, a store with “chambers above” at Lot No. 2 West, and a house to the northeast on Orange Street. Dall rented out rooms at all these properties, frequently to journeymen cabinetmakers and upholsterers, often named or identifiable as journeymen to Vose.37

Vose’s taxable property valuation climbed steadily and was assessed at $10,500 in 1803. The next year, Vose caught the fever of the day for property development and joined a group of twenty-four South End developers to form the Front Street Corporation. Most of the proprietors were also members of the Hollis Street Church and included Dall, his neighbor. Vose was the sole artisan among the group otherwise listed as merchants or “esquire,” giving an estimate of the respect afforded to him. The town granted the corporation the right to fill out into the waters of South Cove to the east of Washington Street and required the partners to build the new Front Street (now Harrison Avenue). They backfilled behind this area to create “made” land and developed these lots with houses, stores, and wharves.38

Explosive real-estate development and speculative fever spread into South Boston, providing impetus for the construction of a new bridge in 1804 to lessen the distance from Boston. The bridge terminated on Boston Neck, directly opposite and one lot north of Vose’s shop and house, a prime location adjacent to a heavily traveled route.39 In future years, Vose’s shop would become a destination and was often cited as a landmark in newspaper advertisements. The continuous line of ships and wharves along the left side of a lithograph from the period clearly shows extensive baulks (or large beams), planks, and boards piled on decks and in waterfront lumberyards (fig. 4). This was the lumber district of Boston. But as one well-born lady noted in her diary after visiting Vose, the neighborhood was “not a proper place for Young ladies to walk a lone.”40

Vose purchased another property in 1804 on the extension of Washington Street to the north, named Orange Street, probably number 127.41 Its three leaseholds were valued at $3,600 and provided additional rental income. After the death of his wife in 1807, Vose boarded ever-greater numbers of his journeymen in its building(s).42 The long narrow property extended all the way across the tidal “flatts” to its associated wharf at the low water mark along South Cove. This location gave Vose entry to Boston’s lumber district and, after 1804, to a further, highly profitable business—the importation, sawing, and sale of mahogany.

Some idea of the scale of Vose’s imports of this luxury wood is given by a rare surviving survey of mahogany logs he imported in 1809 on the schooner Zebra (fig. 5).43 Former cabinetmaker turned lumber surveyor John Cogswell measured the contents of each of the 150 logs as containing 35,510 board feet for purposes of assessing import taxes. The cargo would have been valued between $7,200 for “Bay” (Honduras) mahogany and $10,650 for the harder, more valuable “Island” mahogany (Swietenia mahogani).44 Vose’s mahogany imports and sales clearly provided him a significant income from at least 1804 to 1825.45 By 1798, he had already built a “wood drying house” adjacent to his shop, which could be used to season this valuable commodity.46

Vose & Coates diversified further in 1808 and 1809 when they began direct importation and sales of luxury English and French furnishings. A detailed ship manifest lists nineteen cases they imported, along with three “casks.”47 The contents of some of these are found in the first advertisement placed by the cabinetmakers on December 6, 1809: “Vose & Coates, have received per the [ship] Galen, from London. A large assortment of Looking Glasses; convex Mirrors, and Girandoles, which they offer for sale on reasonable terms.”48 Gilt looking glasses, especially in the latest fashions, were among the luxury furnishings providing the highest profit margins. The casks probably contained hardware, lighting, or other Birmingham metalware.49

By 1810, Vose’s taxable valuation had risen almost continuously to $13,600 for his house, shop with stock in trade, and rental property with wharf. With Vose’s increasingly diverse business activities, in his later career he may have discontinued working at the bench, leaving that task to Coates, who appears to have been a craftsman only.50

Two pieces of furniture survive from this period with firm links to Vose & Coates. Both clearly show the partners could work at a high level of craftsmanship and refinement. A fancy-painted worktable of satinwood and maple is signed “Vose & Coates.”51 It is inscribed in black ink on the underside of a beautifully crafted interior tray and remains their only known signed piece of furniture. The tray’s extremely thin sides are joined at each corner with two thin slips of a dark hardwood (rosewood?), each let into the mitered corners with diagonal saw cuts, then glued and trimmed flush. This technique was used throughout the period of the Vose shops and appears to be characteristic of their work alone in this period.52 Further sophistication is evidenced by the thin, curving stretchers made of three bent-laminated veneers.

Elizabeth Derby, a wealthy divorcée and style maven of Salem, Massachusetts, patronized Vose & Coates in 1808 with a large order for sixteen pieces of furniture totaling $542.50. A wine cooler, charged to her at $32, is the only item in her order known to survive (fig. 6).53 Its oval-shaped tub, now missing the original metal liner, is faced with alternating veneers of crotch-figured light birch and dark mahogany, encircled by polished brass bands. These are supported on turned and reeded legs, with acanthus-carvings at the top in the unmistakable crisp, London neoclassical style of Boston’s finest woodcarver, Thomas Wightman (1759–1827).

No other furniture carver working in Boston approached the quality of Wightman’s refined work. His style and workmanship are instantly recognizable. Like Joshua Coates, Wightman was an English immigrant, born in Liverpool. From at least 1780, he lived, trained, and worked in London, where he married and had several children.54 From his immigration to Boston in 1797 until the adoption there of the classical style, about 1815, Wightman’s carving copied his London training and production.55 His designs were precise and symmetrical, deeply incised and sharply outlined. The confidence of his cuts and the perfection of his continuous curves are remarkable. Slight mistakes are rare. Wightman was evidently Vose’s principal subcontract carver at least as early as the manufacture of Elizabeth Derby’s cooler. Their relationship lasted until Vose’s death. In the coming years, Vose would show increasing partiality to hiring many other British-immigrant artisans who could execute the latest British styles to the elevated British standards so preferred in Boston.

Vose & Coates continued to attract the highest ranks of Boston society. Jonathan Mason, a leading lawyer and an original proprietor of real estate development on Mount Vernon Street, Beacon Hill, purchased two large groups of wedding furniture for two of his daughters. When Elizabeth Mason married Samuel Dunn Parker in 1807, Mason’s accounts record the purchase from Vose & Coates of two orders totaling $1,579. When daughter Miriam Mason married the recently wealthy young merchant David Sears, a similar purchase was recorded for $1,577.56

Despite these commissions, Vose’s business diversification proved wise. A series of setbacks in the next years tested his strength. In 1807, one month after the birth of his eighth child, newspapers noted the death of “Mrs. Mary Vose, Aet 38, the amiable and virtuous consort of Mr. Isaac Vose.”57 Vose never remarried. Sometime before 1812, when Vose was appointed legal guardian of his six surviving children, all of them went to live with his wife’s brother Seth Bemis, a mill owner of Watertown, and with her brother-in-law John Richardson, a merchant then of Newton.58 It is likely that Vose’s son Isaac Jr. trained as a merchant-retailer with one of these two relatives. There is no evidence he ever worked as a cabinetmaker.

Predations by the British and French on American shipping also came to a head in 1807 when President Thomas Jefferson declared a total embargo on American shipping to any port in Great Britain. New England maritime and mercantile interests were devastated in the years leading up to and during the War of 1812. Vose was caught in the crossfire. The mahogany brig Joseph, which he co-owned with his neighbor William Dall, was seized and condemned in 1812 by the American privateer Fame just outside greater Boston Harbor on its return from St. Petersburg via Sweden and Liverpool.59 A second ship of Vose and Dall’s was also seized and confiscated, but details are unknown. Restitution for this loss of $4,286 was paid to their heirs only in 1833.60

In 1810, Vose’s reverses continued with the death of five-year-old Charles, the younger of his two sons.61 The same year, the perils of the mahogany trade apparently claimed the life of Vose’s younger brother Stephen. He had probably been acting in Santo Domingo as an agent for Isaac to purchase mahogany and may have returned with a tropical fever.62

Despite the deepening depression caused by the embargo, the Hollis Street Church built a grand new brick building in 1810–11.63 Vose & Coates was paid a substantial $477.58, and Thomas Wightman received $318 for carving work. Both charges were probably for the elaborate mahogany pulpit and carved curtain valance shown in an early photograph (fig. 7).64 Their work also included the creation of the two large and striking mahogany tablets flanking the curtains and pulpit. An early church historian described them as the gift of church member and wealthy Boston merchant Benjamin Bussey. “It may interest you to know that these tables [archaic for “tablets”], still guarding this pulpit, on the right hand and on the left, were made by Messrs. Vose and Coates; the painting executed by John R. Penniman, all of whom were considered the first in their profession.”65 The photograph depicts their near eight-foot height, with arched tops surmounted by large carved sunbursts and flaring, fluted bracket supports with carved winged angels. Their surface appears to be mahogany, perhaps with gilding applied to some carved elements.

John Ritto Penniman’s elegant gilt lettering in Gothic script on the left panel can be read in the photograph: “And Jesus Son of God Spoke these Words, Saying,” followed by the Ten Commandments. A version of the Lord’s Prayer was spelled out on the right tablet. Penniman was recognized as Boston’s finest decorative painter. His studio on Orange Street, only one block from the church, was in the same rented building as that of the young cabinetmaker Thomas Emmons, who with his partner George Archbald would soon become a principal competitor of Vose & Coates.66

Vose’s prominence and standing in his church is reinforced by his purchase for $625 of a deed to one of the most expensive pews in the new church. In the same front-and-center location were fellow members Edward Tuckerman, Benjamin Bussey, John Davis Williams, Barzillai Homes, and General Amasa Davis.67

Vose’s diversification protected him during the embargo and war years, and his tax valuation continued to rise. In 1811, he was taxed for a new mahogany wharf on the Front Street property, which he had acquired in 1804 as proprietor of the Front Street Corporation. The “store and improvements” with lumberyard were valued by assessors at the substantial sum of $4,000. (It is probably one of the wharves with ships tied up visible in an early view of South Boston Bridge [see fig. 4]).68

Other successful merchants who had diversified also weathered the wartime economy and continued to purchase stylish furniture. In 1814, Stephen Salisbury (1746–1829) of Worcester and his wife, Elizabeth (Tuckerman) Salisbury (1768–1851), purchased six pieces for a bedchamber from Vose & Coates for a total of $143.69 Stephen was in partnership with his brother Samuel as S. & S. Salisbury; the latter operated the Boston branch of their business importing and retailing general merchandise. Elizabeth (fig. 8) was the daughter of one of Vose’s South End neighbors, the wholesale baker and international merchant Edward Tuckerman (1740–1818), who owned a South End wharf just to the north of Vose’s shop. He was a leading member of the Hollis Street Church and active in the building of the new church in 1811. It was probably through her father that Elizabeth selected Vose as her principal cabinetmaker.70

Elizabeth Salisbury was an extremely demanding customer. She evidently returned the Pembroke table listed on the 1814 order: a letter from her brother-in-law Samuel Salisbury in Boston noted that “Mr. Vose says he will take back the Table.”71 She also rejected imported lighting purchased from Vose, which she claimed was defective: “I am not at all satisfy’d with our Entry Lamp. . . . If not mistaken, I ask’d him [Vose] if the Lamp I saw hanging (& which I suppose [is the] same we have) was not crooke’d and he told me it was not. At any rate, I stipulated to exchange any thing I was not satisfy’d with.”72

As the wife of a wealthy merchant who indulged her tastes, Elizabeth spent money freely. After selecting chintz with silk ball fringe for bed curtains, she wrote her husband from Boston: “I think it will please you. . . . If you find I have spent too much money, you can punish me by not permitting me to come again.”73 She did come again, writing to Stephen that “when I left home, I had no Idea that I should spend all the money you gave me, but the fact is . . . the money goes . . . but very fast.”74 Vose prospered because of free-spending women like Elizabeth Salisbury, and he understood that satisfying female clientele, the principal buyers of furniture throughout this period, was essential. Many of his customers returned over a period of decades. Evidently his word was good.75

EXPANSION AFTER THE WAR: VOSE, COATES & CO., 1815–1819

After eight years of commercial and economic distress in New England, news of peace finally arrived in early 1815 to great joy and exuberant celebrations. Boston merchants rushed to reestablish credit and commercial relations with their London bankers, suppliers, and agents. Others traveled there to meet demand denied by a decade of war and now lusting for the newest luxury furnishings. Their ranks were joined by twenty-one-year-old Isaac Vose Jr., who had just joined his father’s firm, now renamed Vose, Coates & Co. The young merchant-partner was apparently in charge of imports. He traveled to Liverpool with Joshua Coates in late 1815 to purchase “a great variety of articles in his line of business.”76

The younger Vose had probably just returned to Boston in August 1816 when a newspaper advertisement with the firm’s recent London imports appeared, touting “Elegant Lamps, & Looking Glasses . . . an additional supply of elegant and useful articles of Furniture, viz. An elegant assortment of Chandeliers, Lamps and Candlesticks; convex Mirrors, with double branches; Pier Glasses, Girandoles, and Dressing Glasses of the most fashionable patterns.” They further offered “Rose Wood, gilt and bronzed Chairs of the newest pattens [sic]; seasoned Mahogany of all dimensions kept constantly for sale.”77

In August 1816, John Derby, a wealthy heir and merchant in Salem, purchased from Vose, Coates & Co. “24 rosewood chairs del’d at Salem as agreed, $150,” probably among those just imported.78 The relatively low cost of $6.50 per chair indicates that they were faux grained to resemble rosewood. Vose noted at the bottom of his bill to Derby that “we have retained one of the Chairs for the purpose of doing the Sofa by,” rare proof of his direct adaptation of the latest imported British style. They were probably similar if not identical to a surviving partial set of imported English chairs of about 1817 that were purchased by Boston merchant Nathan Appleton. These are rosewood grained on beech, a typical English furniture wood, and have floral- and leafage-pattern brass inlaid into the crest rails.79

These “newest patterns” had already begun to trickle into Boston just before and even during the war. One of these styles encompassed what is today called “English Regency,” probably first introduced to the town by English immigrant Thomas Seymour. In 1809 Seymour advertised “several articles of a new and elegant style,” probably referring to these Regency innovations.80 Throughout his career, Seymour favored the latest English fashions. These included several pieces he clearly adapted from Regency-style designs published in Thomas Sheraton’s pattern book The Cabinet Dictionary (London, 1803).81

A second style innovation, termed “Grecian” in the period, was based on French and English reinterpretations of ancient classical architecture, decoration, and furnishings.82 Newspaper advertisements in Boston explicitly describing “Grecian” furnishings first appeared about 1811. The alluring description of the Boston Theater that had been recently redecorated by British immigrant actor and scene painter John Worrall is among the earliest. He noted the elements as “tastefully adorned, alternately with a lyre, and wreaths. . . . The figure of Apollo, with the lyre, seated among the clouds upon Olympus . . . ornaments . . . painted in claire obscure with festoons of flowers, over ornaments a la Grecque upon a rich lilack ground.”83

Advertisements for “Grecian” furniture designs appeared about the same time in Boston, beginning with lamps and wine coolers in 1811 and card tables in 1812.84 British immigrant upholsterer William Lemon announced his sale in 1812 of “Grecian Couches, Sofas, Chairs, &c. stuffed in the English and French mode.”85 In the next five years, offerings proliferated with a Grecian appellation for virtually every type of furniture.

The earliest surviving Boston furniture that was explicitly identified as “Grecian” in a period document is a pair of card tables purchased in late 1816 by Peter Chardon Brooks from Thomas Seymour for his Medford country estate, The Elms (fig. 9).86 Their design was undoubtedly based on similar English examples imported into Boston.87 Brooks purchased furniture in Regency and Grecian classical styles, both popular and used together in the interiors of wealthy Boston families. They reflected the generally conservative British taste of Bostonians compared to the more adventurous French fashions then popular in New York and Philadelphia. Local taste preferred “accessories that were distinguished, yet unpretentious, elegant, yet chaste, fashionable, yet not avant garde.”88

Because Boston cabinetmakers were at first unfamiliar with the new Grecian designs, not every early effort was successful. Two sideboards, for example, made by Seymour and carved by Thomas Wightman about 1815 are awkward in their massive upper cases, which are supported by small-proportioned and curiously carved legs and paw feet (see fig. 25).89 Seymour was unable to capitalize fully from his introductions in the new Grecian style as he had from his English Regency innovations. He had struggled financially during the embargo and War of 1812 years. In 1817, he closed his own cabinetmaking shop after a twelve-year run. For the next two years, he worked as foreman for another up-and-coming local artisan, James Barker and his furniture warehouse.90

Isaac Vose Jr. returned from England in late 1816 with the latest in imported fashions, but Coates stayed on there for a few months.91 Before leaving Boston, Coates formally promised to marry Thomas Wightman’s daughter Maria (1788–1855). The Wightman family had lived directly across from Vose & Coates since 1812 in lodgings rented from William Dall.92 But letters from Dall’s children inform us that Maria learned Coates had married “an old flame” while he was in Birmingham. Maria’s affronted father removed the portrait of Coates that had hung “revered” in his hall but was now an insulting presence.93 When Coates returned to Boston, Maria’s brother, the local engraver Thomas Wightman Jr., avenged his sister more directly, committing assault and battery on Coates.94 The Wightman family moved from their place across from the Vose, Coates & Co. shop to a rented leasehold farther north on Orange Street.95 Wightman continued as Vose’s carver of choice but probably couldn’t bear to live opposite his daughter’s betrayer.96

Despite these dramas, Vose, Coates & Co. continued to add patrons from the growing rolls of Boston’s elite. Harrison Gray Otis (1765–1848) was a leading Boston federalist politician and real-estate developer. He made three substantial purchases from the firm in 1816 and 1817 totaling $835.97 In 1817 and 1818, Charles Russell Codman (1784–1852) recorded six payments to Vose, Coates & Co. totaling $2,600 for furniture for his new house on Chestnut Street.98 Vose’s shop had become a destination of choice for Boston’s wealthy. Mehitable (Sullivan) Cutler Amory (1772–1847) noted in her diary, “Mr. Buckminster and Young [Washington] Alston at Dinner—Mr. A and myself walkd to Voses to look at a side board.”99

The only fully documented surviving furniture sold by Vose, Coates & Co. late in the decade is a pair of tables described on an 1818 receipt from Vose as “2 Mahogany Pier Tables with Marble tops” (fig. 10).100 They cost the wealthy South End wine and liquor merchant John Davis Williams (1770–1848) the substantial sum of $280, out of a total of $980 for a variety of furnishings. Williams was a fellow Hollis Street Church member who lived several buildings south of Vose on Washington Street. His order also included a “Grecian Couch,” a set of “16 Mahogany Chairs in Haircloth @ $17 [per chair],” “10 Gilt & White Chairs @ $6,” “French Andirons,” and two bureaus to be delivered later.

The tables are the earliest documented work of Vose, Coates & Co. in the new classical style, and several distinctive methods of construction and ornamentation allow for the attribution of other pieces with shared features. The front and side edges of the lower plinth are shaped with gently rounded, in-curving outlines. The feet are simple, slightly tapering cylinders with a narrow projecting fillet molding at the bottom, adapted from those on imported French furniture.101 The four rails and stiles of the plinth structure are each a single thick board, joined at the front corners with mortise-and-tenon joints and dovetails at the rear. Decorative brass moldings in a leafage pattern are set in rebates bordering the lower plinth and feet. Similar moldings in a rope pattern frame the recessed panels of pilasters flanking the mirror.102

The firm of Vose, Coates & Co. was patronized many times by the merchant Nathan Appleton (1779–1861) for his fashionable town house at 39 Beacon Street, which was completed in 1817.103 His elegant rosewood pier table (fig. 11) is attributable to the firm based on the same distinctive features as the Williams tables.104 Its more expensive wood and lavish use of brass moldings mark it as a costlier version. A photograph from the 1880s shows its gently in-curved front facade and its conforming marble top fit against the bowed wall of the front parlor at Appleton’s house.105 The compressed ball feet with applied decorative brass moldings characterize a group of furniture made in the Vose, Coates & Co. shop as well as in Vose’s successor shop.106 Projecting wood fillet moldings at the base of the plinth are applied around the tight curves of the outset corners; they were made by bending and laminating three thin veneers, the same technique used to construct the curved stretchers of the worktable that Vose & Coates made and signed a decade earlier. Moldings surrounding the apron rails under the marble have a simple beveled profile, a shape found frequently on Vose, Coates & Co.’s work in this early Grecian period.

Appleton’s purchases for his new house included two additional pier tables closely related to each other but with differing marble tops. The more outstanding of these is from about 1817–19; it employs highly figured branch mahogany veneers throughout and a spectacular “specimen” marble top (fig. 12).107 It can also be firmly attributed to Vose, Coates & Co. based on construction features that are similar to those used for the documented Williams tables. In addition to the array of marble inlays, the corners of the central rectangular panel of black marble have inlaid multicolored butterflies set into white grounds. Appleton might have bought his Italian marble top in Boston or imported it directly, as he did other furnishings. An 1812 advertisement in Boston offered a similar “Pier Table, of Italian marble, inlaid with specimens of each kind in mosaic.”108 The table’s boldly carved claw feet can be attributed to Thomas Wightman.

Here, Thomas Wightman’s very square foot design employs a squared band of hanging leafage at the top and a straight vertical rear edge, with his preferred vertical rib of stylized hair at the rear hock. Claws are extremely pronounced and large scale. On the sides, drapery folds are suspended at the front from a curling volute, at the rear from a carved ring. The rear feet are turned and carved with a distinctive wide band of large-scale reeds, a design borrowed directly from ancient classical design sources. The shaping of the sides of the base plinth is more pronounced and asymmetrical than on Appleton’s pier table (see fig. 11), probably indicating a slightly later date.

Also distinctive is the central panel on the front apron rail, which features an applied Boulle-work panel of inlaid brass and rosewood. The precision of its central anthemion and stylized leafage indicates that it would have been imported from the highly specialized industry in Birmingham, England. In fact, every known Boston piece with such panels can be tied to Nathan Appleton and either to Vose, Coates & Co. or to Thomas Seymour. It is likely these panels were among the hardware that Joshua Coates selected while he was in Birmingham, along with his English wife.109

Another pier table that probably also descended from Appleton is similar in most features.110 The principal differences are its use of rosewood and rosewood faux-graining instead of mahogany, the canted front corners on its apron rails, and its plain white marble top with pale gray veining and molded edges. It also has a Boulle-work panel of an identical pattern on the central portion of the front apron rail, but with the brass and rosewood elements reversed. The construction details of the two tables are virtually identical, as is the shaping of the base plinth and shelf. The pattern of the carved front feet is similar but simplified from that of the rosewood table. The distinctive carved and turned rear feet with large-scale reeds are virtually identical on both tables, although the patterns of brass mounts and moldings differ.111

Several photographs taken in the 1880s of Appleton’s Beacon Street house (see fig. 14) show a pair of upholstered Grecian couches in the front parlor that are rosewood grained (fig. 13).112 A second pair of similar design but made of solid and veneered rosewood also descended from Appleton. Only one of these couches survives; it also features brass and rosewood Boulle-work panels.113 Two of three panels on each of these couches employ a pattern similar, but not identical, to those used on Appleton’s pier tables.

The year 1818 was a landmark for Peter Chardon Brooks. He noted in his daybook: “Our daughter Ann was married on the Evening of Monday March.2.1818 to Rev. N. [Nathaniel] L. Frothingham, Pastor of the First Church.”114 Brooks detailed his expenditures totaling $4,000 for furnishings for Ann’s wedding gift. Her largest purchase by far was for “Mahogany furniture of Vose & Coates” at a cost of $1,201.50.115 Brooks could well afford it. The previous December, his habitual year-end accounting of his moral and financial net worth showed that his assets had surpassed one million dollars.116

MATURITY AND EXCELLENCE: ISAAC VOSE & SON, WITH THOMAS SEYMOUR, 1819–1825

The Vose, Coates & Co. firm received a shock when Joshua Coates died suddenly on February 28, 1819, after being thrown from a carriage.117 Three weeks later, Vose gave public notice that his partnership with Coates was dissolved and that he had become partners with his son Isaac Jr., operating as Isaac Vose & Son (fig. 14).118 Coates’s probate inventory lists the value of his half of the business as $9,250, an astonishing sum for a craftsman, especially an immigrant who had arrived as a young man with no assets twenty-five years before.119

Just one week later, the first of many prominent advertisements was placed by the new firm. It continued to make “Rich and Valuable Furniture” and had “on hand a Large Assortment of Cabinet Ware, of All Kind, Mahogany and Rose Wood Chairs . . . All orders [received] for Furniture to any pattern,—and for every article in the Upholstery Line.” The long list of imported luxury furnishings included an extensive assortment of “elegant” lighting, imported gilt looking glasses, and, “by the late arrivals from France, a few sets of Rich French Andirons.”120

This initial advertisement also touted the firm’s new “Manufactory of Painted, Japan’d and Fancy Chairs” and announced that “[they] have taken Mr. Joshua Holden, into the concern of that branch of business.” Holden was well known to Vose, having rented lodgings and a workshop at the latter’s 127 Orange Street property beginning in 1812.121 Holden’s productions were probably sold in Vose’s “Chair Store” adjacent to his shop, which he had rented from William Dall beginning in 1814. The Vose–Holden partnership lasted only one year.122

Within two months of Coates’s death, the leasehold at William Dall’s across the street, which Thomas Wightman and his daughter had abandoned, was rented by Thomas Seymour.123 Seymour had worked the previous two years for James Barker at his “Furniture Warehouse,” but that enterprise had failed or was failing by mid-1819, after the death of Barker’s young wife, Ann (née Raymond). Seymour soon shifted his role as foreman-cabinetmaker from Barker’s shop to Isaac Vose & Son’s.124

With the addition of Seymour’s superb skills and his emphasis on craftsmanship of the highest standard, the Vose shop productions took a leap upward in quality of construction and diversity of design. A large number of pieces from this period are either identified by the company’s stencil or documented through receipts or history of descent; still others can be attributed to the shop based on these examples. Seymour apparently also brought along his predilection for attracting a series of talented British artisans who had recently immigrated; their advanced skills further elevated the shop’s standards. The addition of Seymour as foreman only enhanced and expanded Isaac Vose & Son’s status as the destination for fashionable furniture in Boston.

The collaboration of Isaac Vose and Thomas Seymour merged two powerhouses, one with sharp business acumen and the other with outstanding craftsmanship and artistic creativity.125 Seymour’s contribution was the single greatest key to the extraordinary quality of the furniture produced by Isaac Vose & Son between 1819 and 1825, a period that represented the glory days for the shop and for classical furniture in Boston. Vose relished his role as businessman, freeing Seymour to focus on his particular gifts.126

A rosewood Grecian dressing table with mirror (fig. 15) is probably among the earliest pieces produced by the Vose–Seymour collaboration. It bears the stenciled label of the new partnership of Isaac Vose & Son (see fig. 14). Samuel Appleton (1766–1853), Nathan Appleton’s brother and former business partner, reportedly purchased the table when he married Mary (LeKain) Gore (1788–1870) in 1819.127 Although it lacks a marble top, the dressing table serves as a good comparison with Nathan Appleton’s rosewood pier table, which was probably made sometime before 1819 under the supervision of Joshua Coates (see fig. 11). The two relate closely in design and dates of manufacture, yet the dressing table exemplifies the refinements that Seymour brought to the new partnership.

Both tables employ rectangular recesses lined with different patterns of die-rolled brass moldings. Both have soft curves on the fronts and sides of the plinths, cut in segments of a circle. These gently curved plinth shapes typify the earlier pier table forms made by Vose & Coates. Soon after the dressing table was made, these soft curved plinths were abandoned for a much bolder treatment, with the sides cut deeply in sections of an ellipse. Although these more radical plinth curves may have been introduced under Coates’s tenure with the firm, they became ubiquitous on pier tables made by Vose’s competitors Emmons and Archbald and were adopted by shops across the city. The two tables also share the highly compressed ball feet with die-rolled brass equatorial rings that became common among several Boston shops. The tables’ simple beveled moldings beneath the tops are apparently unique to the Vose shop (fig. 16).

The most obvious improvement that Seymour made on the dressing table was the fussy precision of all the joinery and veneer work. The level of finish is high in all places, seen and unseen.128 Even the undersides of the plinth rails are perfectly clean, eschewing the use of pinch-dog clamps (used to glue the fillet moldings to the curved sides) that made the small square holes in secondary surfaces typical of Coates’s work.129

One of Seymour’s great talents was his artistic manipulation of the finest figured veneers to create an integrated composition that accentuates the form of the furniture. This dynamic is seen in the frieze of the dressing table, which is composed of three drawers. What appears to be one continuous piece of figured rosewood veneer across the three drawers is in fact three pieces assembled to add subtle asymmetrical drama, which contrasts sharply with the strict geometry of the form. A shallow concavity cut in the center of the apron echoes the curve of the plinth below and draws the viewer’s eye toward the center. As an importer of wood, Vose was able to select the best for his shop. Seymour had a taste for extraordinary wood and used it to great advantage to create beautiful and integrated visual compositions. No other cabinetmaker in Boston could match his artistic skills or the quality of the woods he used.

Two stylish furniture forms popular in Boston were inspired more by French design than English—the secrétaire à abattant (retaining its French name, which roughly translates to “drop-leaf desk”) and the “French” dressing bureau. Examples of both forms showcase Seymour’s veneering talents. They appear in many publications by French designers of the period, especially those published in serial form by Pierre de La Mésangère.130 La Mésangère’s publications were surely circulating through the local cabinet shops, because his designs were frequently adapted by Boston cabinetmakers. It is also likely that wealthy Bostonians imported French secrétaires and dressing bureaus that influenced local cabinetmakers’ work.

One of the most informative and beautiful secrétaires made by the Vose shop was owned by Harvard professor George Ticknor (1791–1871) and probably purchased at his marriage in 1822 to wealthy heiress Anna Eliot (fig. 17). This secrétaire follows to the letter the construction details of one now at the Smithsonian Institution that bears the Vose & Son stencil and was most likely purchased from the firm by Joseph Coolidge (1798–1879).131 The manipulation of the spectacular branch veneers is particularly striking on Ticknor’s secrétaire. Veneers book-matched in four directions across the facade form an abstract image that creates dramatic movement. The flitches of veneer in the upper half continue uninterrupted across the beveled medial bar, moderating the horizontal interruption of this structural element, a signature feature of Seymour’s secrétaires. To keep the movement of the effervescent veneers in check, he carefully contained the central panels by framing them with vertical book-matched veneers on the half-round columns. He then capped them with the horizontal motion of the grain on the frieze drawer above, punctuated by the exaggerated knife-edge molding, called “Grecian ovolo” in the 1820s and sometimes “keel molding” today, just beneath the overhanging top (fig. 18).132 This helps draw the eye in a horizontal direction, further capping the expanding motion of the branch veneers. Seymour, alone among Boston cabinetmakers, set decorative moldings into shallow grooves cut into his cases, resulting in a bond that was more permanent. This feature serves as another identifying practice that he brought to the Vose shop.

In Boston, Grecian dressing bureaus and chests of drawers were called “French.” This term distinguished them from those of English designers and cabinetmakers, who preferred Regency-style case pieces with bowed fronts and turned legs that elevated the cases off the ground. Most Bostonians preferred Regency-style case furniture for bedrooms, but some of the wealthiest and more style-conscious wanted the Grecian, or “French,” forms. These typically have an overhanging frieze drawer at the top, three recessed drawers below flanked by free-standing or engaged columns, with cases raised on a thick base plinth with compressed ball feet. La Mésangère’s publications were replete with handsome designs for this chest form, such as plate 328 titled “Commode en acajou flambé” (chest in flame mahogany). Seymour surely saw these designs but took them a step further with his virtuoso veneering talents.133

A stylish “French” dressing bureau stamped with Vose & Son’s label (fig. 19) is a key to the study of the firm’s products. Conforming to the highest standards of workmanship, it serves as an important document that allows other unmarked case pieces to be attributed to the shop with great accuracy. The drawers below the frieze have long horizontal branch veneers from the same flitch, with the plumes oriented left, right, and left in descending order, an arrangement that typifies Seymour’s veneer work.

The labeled dressing bureau also employs another veneering feature that is unique to the Vose shop and to Seymour’s craftsmanship. Drawer blades and fascia behind the columns are faced with long expanses of tightly figured curly mahogany veneers, seen also on fillet moldings that outline recesses on pilasters, aprons, and stiles. Seymour clearly loved this effect, which added further texture and visual interest to his work beginning about 1805. No other Boston shop appears to have used such perfectly consistent curly mahogany veneer for contrasting texture. Its use highlights the effort and expense the Vose shop expended to please its discriminating customers.134

One of the most striking features of the labeled dressing table (see fig. 15) and Ticknor’s secrétaire (see fig. 17) is the keen perfection of the drawer construction, a hallmark of work from the Vose firm. Based on his French training, precise workmanship, and distinctive florid handwriting script, French immigrant William Piquot was likely the journeyman who made and inscribed these remarkable drawers.135 Piquot apparently had become a drawer-making specialist for the firm by at least 1817–18, as seen on a recently discovered secrétaire à abattant attributed to Vose & Coates, with similarly inscribed drawers.136

The drawer fronts and sides were made of cabinet-grade mahogany, with backs and bottoms of clear “Bay” (Honduras) mahogany. The dovetails are extremely fine, laid out with perfect scribe lines, without visible gaps or saw kerfs. The drawer backs are slightly lower than the drawer sides, and the top rear corners of the drawer sides are perfectly beveled, as are the vertical rear corners of the drawers. Three or five evenly spaced tiny cut sprigs secure the drawer bottoms to the backs. Inside the drawers, mahogany quarter-round moldings often line the lower corners, where the drawer sides meet the bottoms, as seen on the labeled dressing table above. The interior drawers are inscribed on the outside of the drawer backs (figs. 20, 21) with unmistakably florid Ls (left) and Rs (right). These remarkable drawers with their distinctive marks are seen repeatedly on work by Isaac Vose & Son, separating it from all other cabinetwork done in Boston.

Some of the furniture made by Isaac Vose & Son for Stephen and Elizabeth Salisbury of Worcester is documented by a letter to Elizabeth from her niece Abigail (Breese) Salisbury.137 In the letter, dated July 28, 1820, Abigail mentions a side table, a pair of card tables, a set of chairs, and a pair of sofas just made by the Vose shop that she had recently inspected there for her aunt. Of these pieces, the card tables and chairs can be identified.138 Distinctive design and construction features of the Salisburys’ card tables (fig. 22), along with a wine cooler that also descended in the family (fig. 23), allow a group of related pieces to be confidently attributed to Isaac Vose & Son.139 These related examples include a sideboard and a sofa table; another pair of card tables; and a side table seen in a photograph (see fig. 9) taken in the 1880s of Nathan Appleton’s dining room.140

The sarcophagus-shaped wine cooler has four distinctive features: a central recess on the front panel filled with dramatic branch mahogany veneers; a beaded frame around the recess in an elongated quatrefoil shape; a crossbanded and mitered frame of stripe-grained mahogany around the beaded recess; and carved “furry” hocks on the backs of the paw feet. The first feature is employed on a pair of pier tables that Seymour provided to Peter Chardon Brooks in 1816.141 The crossbanded mitered frames (although not seen on Brooks’s pier tables) are one of Seymour’s favorite devices. All these features are present on the Salisbury card tables. The carved paw feet with furry hocks on the wine cooler are closely associated with the work of Thomas Wightman.

Isaac Vose, Thomas Seymour, and Thomas Wightman were a formidable team. One of the early masterworks from this collaboration is a Grecian sideboard that presents a fully formed expression of a creative Boston aesthetic that built on a vocabulary of ancient design (fig. 24). It can be accurately attributed to the Isaac Vose & Son shop based on the idiosyncratic treatment of both the facade of the wine cooler and the aprons of the card tables mentioned in the Salisbury letter. This sideboard, or one of similar design, may be what Abigail Salisbury called a “side table” in her letter. The sideboard shares with those pieces the elongated quatrefoil-shaped and beaded recesses filled with branch veneers, each framed by mitered stripe-figured mahogany veneers. Wedged through-tenons, moldings set into grooves, use of ash as a secondary wood, and the drawer construction are all typical of Seymour’s preferences, adding further credence to the attribution.142

The sideboard is a fine example of Seymour’s artistic use of highly figured veneers. He employed plumes of branch veneer in the recesses of the narrow facade to accentuate the horizontal severity of the top and book-matched them in the central drawer to draw the eye toward the center. The small elongated quatrefoil panels at the ends of the frieze are rotated vertically to contain the powerful horizontal flow. The legs convey a sense of strength and power through the downward movement of the vertical branch veneers, while their tapering form and the spring of the paw feet relieve the heaviness of the case above.

Wightman’s carving on the legs provides a brilliant counterbalance to the broad expanses of flat branch veneer elsewhere. At the top of the legs he employs the meme of the Ionic scroll. His bell-shaped fringe of acanthus leaves below is deeply undercut and alive with subtle naturalistic movement, affirming his major talent.

A sideboard of about 1815 attributed to Thomas Seymour (fig. 25) represents an early attempt in the Grecian style, not altogether successful, that provides a fine introduction to Wightman’s superlative carving.143 The semicircular tablets above the legs show a whorl of curving acanthus leaves in high relief, alternating with waterleaves in low relief emanating from a central bud (fig. 26). The larger leaves, drawn in crisp high relief, undulate in naturalistic S curves. Each leaflet moves in a slightly different direction. The interspersed and recessed waterleaves, carved in low relief with sharp central creases, curve gently in the prevailing direction of the flanking leaves. This subtle natural variation lends drama and cohesion to the composition. Although no sketches for Wightman’s carving are known, his carefully thought-out and well-integrated designs are clear proof of a talented draftsman.144 The exact pattern for Wightman’s S-shaped carved acanthus leaves was first published in 1806 by Boston architect Asher Benjamin in his American Builder’s Companion (fig. 27). The engraver of Benjamin’s plate was none other than Thomas Wightman Jr., who had also trained in London before immigrating to Boston in 1800 (see also fig. 3).145

Fashionable furniture imported from England in the 1810s and 1820s directly influenced design in Boston. Unfortunately, most of this expensive furniture has long since lost its association with prominent Boston families, but at least one exception is known. Nathan Appleton owned a stylish English rosewood Davenport desk with elaborate marquetry inlays (fig. 28).146 Similarities in design and construction between this English desk and a Boston-made version attributed to Isaac Vose & Son are striking.147 Vose and/or Seymour likely saw their customer’s English desk and used it as the model (fig. 29).

Other imported furniture is pictured in a silhouette by French artist Augustin Edouart that depicts the family of Daniel P. Parker in their home at 40 Beacon Street (fig. 30). The interior appears to be filled with stylish English furniture. Parker and his wife (Mary Weeks) are seated at a Grecian center table in front of the fireplace, flanked by two of their children.148 The table is likely English, with its apron panels of thick reeding. A remarkably similar Boston table with unknown provenance was likely modeled after this table and can be attributed to Isaac Vose & Son (fig. 31).149 Both share the overall Grecian form, circular aprons with three long rectangular panels interrupted by the stiles of the legs, and recessed panels above the legs. They also have distinctive straight vertical rear edges on the legs, carved oval scrolls on side faces of the legs with half-anthemion tendrils unfolding underneath, and cuffed paw feet. However, the Vose & Son version eliminated the plinth entirely and adapted the apron design by leaving off the thick reeding of the English version.

The carving on the Boston center table is very fine and shows the hallmarks of Wightman’s style, while veneering and quatrefoil moldings in the apron recesses reveal the hand of Seymour.150 This table is a bold and sophisticated statement of the Grecian style in Boston, one that was clearly influenced by an imported English example.

An English rosewood card table with a peculiarly flared rectangular pillar and distinctive carved eagle-head feet (probably imported by Vose or one of his clients) may have provided the design inspiration for a group of tables, including the pair of card tables ordered by Stephen and Elizabeth Salisbury (see fig. 22).151 Perhaps the best example of this group is a sofa table that clearly was crafted in the Vose & Son shop (fig. 32).152 Although its provenance is unknown, the perfect workmanship of the drawers, presumably by William Piquot, the excellent quality of the mounts and casters, the refined selection and placement of veneers, and the use of fine mahogany for most secondary elements are all consistent with the best work from this source. The table also incorporates construction features unique to Isaac Vose & Son. These include a heavy arched and precisely beveled mahogany medial rail at the top of the pillar. This is notched across the upper surface to house the wide T head of the threaded central steel bolt that secures the base below. Shallow rabbets cut into the plinth and medial rail, which capture the ends of the pillar to prevent pivoting, are also distinctive. Strengthening the link to the Vose shop, the pattern of the die-rolled brass molding at the base of the pillar was copied exactly in carved wood by Wightman on the Salisbury card tables.

All the tables with flared rectangular pillars share leafage-carved collars surrounding the column. Each collar is made from a single piece of mahogany with a large rectangular cut-out in the center, allowing it to slide into place over the top of the pillar. These carvings on the collar and legs of this sofa table embody the brilliance of Wightman’s work. These feature directional movement of the deeply undercut leaves flowing over the edge of the collar and lifelike waterleaves that gracefully roll over the oval spirals at the tops of the legs. Although this form is unfamiliar to most scholars and collectors, it is a superlative example that blends the Grecian and Regency styles in a way known only in Boston in the early 1820s.

English design books also provided Boston cabinetmakers with a cornucopia of inspiration. Earlier in his career, Seymour and his father owned a copy of The Cabinet-Maker and Upholsterer’s Drawing-Book by Thomas Sheraton.153 Based on numerous examples of his later Regency furniture adapted directly from designs in Sheraton’s Cabinet Dictionary of 1803, Seymour almost certainly owned a copy of that publication as well.154 Publisher Rudolph Ackermann was the greatest chronicler of the latest styles seen in London during this period. His monthly periodical The Repository of Arts, Literature, Commerce, Manufactures, Fashion and Politics, published between 1809 and 1829 in London, was highly influential in Boston. At least two or possibly three of the designs in the Repository were clearly adapted by the Vose shop for its own local versions.155

The English designer Thomas King also had an impact in Salem and Boston. Although he is best known today for the 1829 publication The Modern Style of Cabinet Work Exemplified, his earlier publications were circulated starting at least in 1823, sometimes issued as loose folio plates, or as published volumes of plates. Seymour and Vose copied line for line one of King’s designs for a magnificent “Pier Slab” in the ornate Grecian style, creating a tour de force of bold Grecian scrolls that incorporated Wightman’s best carving.156 The design was probably included in one of his earlier editions (as yet unlocated) that predated the closing of the Vose shop. Many of King’s patterns were hugely popular in the second half of the 1820s and later, when George Archbald was prominent in the cabinetmaking trade in Boston.

Grecian pedestal card and center tables, with their tapered pylon columns inspired by Egyptian architecture and flat plinth bases, had been fashionable in England through the 1810s. Imported examples as well as contemporary published designs undoubtedly provided the inspiration for this ubiquitous form in Boston. In the early nineteenth century, the term Grecian was used to describe any design or architectural motif that originated from ancient Greece, Rome, Egypt, indeed anywhere in the Mediterranean or western Asia. Boston cabinetmakers assembled bits and pieces from ancient and contemporary designs to form a synthesis never imagined in the classical world, calling it “Grecian.”

On August 17, 1824, Peter Chardon Brooks recorded in his waste book the purchase of a large Grecian table “4½ by 5” for $26 from Isaac Vose & Son.157 It is almost certainly the impressive tilt-top pedestal center table now at the Adams National Historic Site (fig. 33).158 Brooks was an early adopter of the Grecian style, recording the purchase of a pair of “Grecian card tables” from Seymour in 1816 (see fig. 9).159 The form had changed little by the time he bought this Grecian center table eight years later. Pedestal tables of this type were popular in Boston, and this example is representative of a number of similar tables that descended from prominent families and can be attributed to Vose & Son.160

Brooks’s center table reflects Isaac Vose & Son practices for this period in its exceptional construction and veneering.161 The four elaborate horizontal moldings at the base of the pylon are shaped from single pieces of vertical-grain mahogany, mitered at the corners, exactly like the pair of card tables Brooks bought from Seymour in 1816. This cross-grain work is a more difficult and labor-intensive method of cutting moldings, but it adds a degree of subtlety and visual interest that typifies the work from this shop. The horizontal top of the plinth is veneered with four separate pieces of branch mahogany, with each plume radiating diagonally over each foot, a signature feature of Seymour’s work.

Pedestal card and center tables from the Vose shop have recognizable construction features that differentiate them from the work of his many competitors. One of the firm’s most spectacular in the Grecian style is a card table of solid and veneered satinwood (fig. 34) that descended in the Lyman family.162 It is built exactly as the only labeled Grecian card table that is known from the Isaac Vose & Son shop.163 One such feature is the use of a heavy mahogany rail that joins with double tenons into the front and rear rails, parallel to the medial rail. It serves as a sturdy anchor for the swivel bolt that allows the top to turn. A second feature is the mitered terminations of the crossbanding surrounding the scrolled ends, which are cut at 135-degree and 85-degree angles, rather than 45-degree angles. A third is the placement of book-matched curly satinwood veneers set at opposing diagonal angles, copying typical English practice. Vose again relied on his role as an importer of tropical woods to procure enough of the rare “bee’s wing” or mottled satinwood for the top, apron, and pylon. This table is a superb example of the highest level of craftsmanship, wood, and veneer selection, making it one of the most expensive card tables made in Boston in this period.164

THE VOSE SHOP CLOSES, 1825

After thirty-four years of success while building his team of outstanding and largely immigrant craftsmen, Isaac Vose died of “brain fever” on May 12, 1823, at age fifty-six.189 His son and partner advertised one month later, asking customers for “a continuance of their favors” and stating that he would continue “the Cabinet business, in all its branches.” He also highlighted his large stock of recently imported lamps and looking glasses.190 For the next two years, Isaac Jr. struggled to maintain the complex business he had inherited. By the following spring, perhaps in an attempt to reassure his clientele, he advertised that “Their Cabinet Manufactory is under the direction of Mr. Thomas Seymour.”191

Isaac Vose Jr. and his brother-in-law (and cousin) Charles Bemis (1789–1874) finally announced on January 5, 1825, their intention as executors “to close their Cabinet Business, and confine themselves to importing and selling Lamps.”192 The partners continued in business in Boston until 1831 as Bemis & Vose, importing and retailing London lighting and other luxury furnishings.193 Thomas Emmons and George Archbald, principal competitors of Isaac Vose & Son, dissolved their partnership on March 3, 1825. Emmons announced the same day that he had purchased the cabinetmaking portion of “Isaac Vose & Son,” including the house and shop, after taking out a private mortgage from Vose’s heirs for $10,000.194 Less than two months later, Thomas Emmons died of “pleurisy fever.”195

With the passing of Isaac Vose and Thomas Emmons, the brilliance of the Boston furniture trade lost much of its luster. After 1825, Vose’s stable of skilled artisans dispersed. Thomas Wightman continued carving for other shops but struggled financially.196 He died intestate in Boston in 1827 from “a tumor,” never having owned real estate in the city in which he worked.197 By 1826, Thomas Seymour had moved to the southern end of Washington Street, into or adjacent to a building rented by cabinetmaker William Fisk; he may have worked for a few years there as a journeyman to Fisk or as an independent cabinetmaker. Tax listings in 1829 and later years identify his occupation as “agent.”198 A later historian of the Massachusetts Charitable Mechanic Association noted that Seymour “had charge of Baldwins Mills [as his brother-in-law’s agent] sawing Mahogany veneers &c—the Sawing of Veneers by Circular Saws was introduced at those Mills.”199 The mills were owned by his brother-in-law Aaron Baldwin and, by 1825 or 1826, were located on Northampton Street (later renamed Camden Street) near William Fisk’s shop.200 Like Wightman, Seymour never owned property in Boston. He eventually retired with his wife about 1842 to a Baldwin-family property in rural Lunenburg and died there in 1848.201

Thomas Emmons’s former partner, the Boston-born George Archbald (1790–1870), continued as an independent cabinetmaker and was a successful and widely respected Boston furniture manufacturer at least into the late 1840s. He eventually purchased a portion of Vose’s former premises on Washington and Dover Streets, built several houses there, and worked from a shop there until retiring to his farm in rural Hopkinton, Massachusetts.202

LASTING INFLUENCE

The decade between 1815 and 1825 was a special time when a small group of talented craftsmen and artisans came together to create some of the most finely crafted and startlingly beautiful furniture Boston has ever known. Thomas Seymour was a pioneer who embraced the Regency and Grecian styles with relish after spending a long and fruitful career creating some of the finest neoclassical furniture in America. His talents as designer-craftsman and Isaac Vose’s nose for business and marketing combined perfectly to ride the wave of prosperity in Boston that followed the end of the War of 1812. Vose’s increasing reliance on highly talented immigrant craftsmen such as Thomas Wightman, William Piquot, and Thomas Hedges allowed his firm to offer the latest styles from England and Europe, together with the highest level of craftsmanship. Vose supplied his clientele with the finest selection of woods and veneers available in Boston. He and Seymour also ran a well-organized operation that became perhaps one of the most prolific cabinetmaking shops of the era. The collaboration of these men cemented the tone for Boston classical furniture well after the cabinet shop closed in 1825 and into the 1840s, when rococo-revival styles began to evolve from classical ideas.

APPENDIX

Listed below are the known labeled and documented objects from the several Vose shops that are not illustrated in this essay. The source of the documentation is noted, and, when known, the current location of the object is given, as well as a reference to a published illustration.

• Painted sewing table inscribed in ink “Vose & Coates.”
  1. Winterthur Museum (1957.0983); see Charles F. Montgomery, American Furniture, The Federal Period (New York: Viking Press, 1966), 462, cat. no. 477.
• Marble-top pier table (the mate to the example in fig. 10) documented by the original bill of sale from Vose, Coates & Company to John Davis Williams, dated October 18, 1818 (Rhode Island School of Design Museum).
  1. Private collection; see Northeast Auctions, Mar. 14–15, 1992, lot 507.
• Dressing bureau with the stenciled label of Isaac Vose & Son (similar to the one illustrated in fig. 19).
  1. Winterthur Museum (2015.0005); see Lita Solis-Cohen, “Winterthur Announces Acquisitions,” Maine Antique Digest 43, no. 5 (May 2015): 12A.
• Card table with the stenciled label of Isaac Vose & Son.
  1. Location unknown; see Charlton Hall, 80^th Anniversary Auction, June 6, 2010, lot 750.
• Card table with the stenciled label of Isaac Vose & Son.
  1. Saint Louis Art Museum (127.1965); see Page Talbott, “Boston Empire Furniture, Part 1,” Antiques 107, no. 5 (May 1975): 883, fig. 7.
• Secrétaire à abattant with the stenciled label of Isaac Vose & Son.
  1. Smithsonian Institution (S1.71.8); see Talbott, “Boston Empire Furniture, Part 1,” 880, pl. 2.
• Center table with the stenciled label of Isaac Vose & Son.
  1. Texas governor’s mansion, Austin (F00224); see Nineteenth Century 2, no. 2 (Summer 1977): 25.
• Washstand with the stenciled label of Isaac Vose & Son.
  1. Private collection; see Page Talbott, “Boston Empire Furniture, Part II,” Antiques 109, no. 5 (May 1976): 1012, fig. 14.
• Set of fourteen dining chairs documented by a letter to Elizabeth Salisbury from her niece Abigail Salisbury, dated July 28, 1820 (Salisbury Family Papers, American Antiquarian Society, Worcester, Mass.).
  1. Worcester Art Museum (2002.41.1–14); see Susan Meyer, The Salisbury Mansion: A Plan for Furnishings (Worcester, Mass.: Worcester Historical Museum, 1986), 56, fig. 55.

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The authors are especially grateful for the generosity, expertise, and assistance of Stuart Feld of Hirschl & Adler Galleries, preeminent dealer in the field of Boston classical furniture, and Page Talbott, leading scholar. Special thanks also to Jane and Richard Nylander.