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Monday, Spring has sprung--finally!

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Monday, Spring has sprung--finally!

#1

Monday, Spring has sprung--finally!

Here�s a softball that you probably didn�t know but will remember at your next antiques show. Bell Flowers the little three pointed flowers that are inlays (most often on the tapered legs) in American antique furniture can be a signature of the location where the piece of furniture was built. On fine furniture the shape of the bellflower, the way the petals are depicted, are keys. Rhode Island made bellflowers with fat center petal and regularly, with an inlaid dot spaced some distance between them. New York made bell flowers in a single piece with no petal delineation and linked them with thin inlaid bands in an oval or circular shape. What city of manufacture made the bellflower with three distinct petals and a long center petal, and had them cascade on one another center points touching the next element in the cascade?

Re: Monday, Spring has sprung--finally!

#2

Re: Monday, Spring has sprung--finally!

I'll guess the cream cheese city?

Tom

Re: Monday, Spring has sprung--finally!

#3

No love there

Re: Monday, Spring has sprung--finally!

#4

Monday answer

The answer is Baltimore. Bell flowers were relatively common on furniture in the late 1700�s through 1800. In fact, the inlays first used by colonial craftsmen to make Federal style furniture were imported from England. But who wanted to wait four to six months for an order of inlay from the defeated Brits when all the wood one would ever need was here already. To a lesser extent a guess of Annapolis would also have been given a gold star�as would any Maryland city between them. For some reason known makers in Baltimore are scarce but recent finds are John Shaw, John Barnhart, Stitcher and Clemmens, and Thomas Renshaw�hardly commonly known. Many of the confirmed Baltimore pieces are known by the person from whose estate they were bought or stolen. Many more are hoarded still by the old and well to do families of D.C., Northern Virginia, and Maryland�s Eastern shore. Public furniture examples are reasonably numerous with places of importance at the Yale University, Baltimore Museum of Art, and Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Incidentally intricate and finely pierced chair backs are another Baltimore furniture tradition.

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