it is still a tall clock, which is relatively costly. by the 1880s, af1818s, terry ha clock. it sits on a mantle. instead of buying a case separately from the cabinet maker to fit your clock in, you get this with the numerals painted on the glass door. by the 1820s, this now looks like the fancier furniture at the time with the finials here painted on the glass dial and much richer item that looks like a piece of furniture as opposed to just a clock. i would walk you through the process in 1820s and 1830s with

the tale of two cities with gardner and sterling. they both started out making chairs like the production of joel pratt. now they are not necessarily singular products, but they are made in sets because people have now many more products and commodities in their households. so, what is interesting here is pratt makes these chairs in a decentralized mode. he doesn't make everything within his shop. he has people in different shops and saw mills and extending into southern new hampshire who are making parts for him. in many cases, he is just assembling the parts and sending them down the province as they are distributed throughout the united states. at the same time, the production begins in gardner. in the 192820s, they start thei

chair making mode with machinery. they bring production inside the factory. instead of an out work system, they use a factory system. by the 1830s, gardner really pushes ahead of sterling. what is really important to me is from my argument, in the 1818 area or 1820s, pratt makes 18,000 chairs a year in the hand mode system. that is a phenomenal amount of chairs. within this older hand work system, you can make lots of things as you speed it up. it is not necessarily the machinery that is the cutting edge. the machinery only comes at the end of the process and allows them to consolidate their goals. so then by the 1820s and '30s, you get the mixture of the windsor chairs and fancy chairs into the most popular chair at

the time which is the hitchcock chair. hitchcock brings all that production home. like my sideboard, it using a more simplified turning to make these much faster. he puts the gold striping. the gold striping extends to the front of the chair. if you turn it around, it would not have the striping on the back. there are labor-saving techniques. he now uses a stencil for the painting instead of free hand painting. there is a much wider range of decorative techniques. much of this is really -- or you get on the higher end and you get alden spooner. for many years, these chest of drawers are believed to be made in newport. they look a lot like newport furniture if you are a connoisseur of this. it is believed that someone

could not make this. it is too high end. we discovered that spooner probably had an apprentice in his shop who really helped him integrate the newer techniques. look at the ovals. it is really quite striking, the design. you are getting really high-end furniture which is made in a whole network of places. you have the more mass produced goods being made as you are getting fancier material. and pushing this argument not just for clocks and chairs, i would really argue in terms of portraits, you are getting the same phenomena of the modes of production to make more and more goods which have the incredibly colorful cornucopia painted form which sumter calls the american

fancy which is the description of the provincial style in the 1820s and 1830s. what is interesting here is this is amme phillips. "girl in a red dress." he has cats and some have dogs. or he makes some which are actually boys on the left side. he also changes the color of the garment on others. in other cases, he drops the child on to the lap of her mother. what he has really done is developed a formula. these are formulaic images. they have similar shapes and designs. he has these formulas. it is a repetition which allows him to work efficiently. i think it is really quite striking. the girls all sit with their arms crossing their bodies

diagonally. they have a kind looking dog lying at their feet. it really stands out. i think what's important here as you can see from the quotation is that john vanderlind says this is a way in the 1820s of making a living. the people in the provincial area are so eager for the goods that there is a fellow here moving through the countryside meeting demand. unlike an urban station where you have a painter in a studio where customers come to him, these are moving throughout the country side to find customers and passing out hand bills to attract customers. they are really cultivating a market where possibly a market didn't exist before. they really are advertising their services and advertising the whole mode of consumption of

these colorful goods. i think that's really quite striking in this quote. because it's really a way of making your living in a more fluid society where the definition of what an artist might be is up for grabs without training or without apprenticeship. there is a whole contest as to who is an artist. i can easily claim as others i write about that i'm an artist. i put my statement out there and start painting literally. it is really the fluidity of the 1820s. i call it a period of innovation when the world of ebeneezer devotion with fixed identities and goods categories of goods is really dissolving under the cultural ambitions of the new nation as well as the efforts of the host of decentralized

producers and consumers. and i think you can see that a bit in this genre scene by charles bird king. although he moved to washington d.c. and became an academic painter, he had a stint in the countryside. you can see the best room through the doorway where the portrait will go when it is finished. it is the fanciest room in the house, but on the other hand, it is a very gendered scene. the women are gathered around the mother who is the sitter for the portrait while the man with guns are heading out for more robust masculine activities while the grandmother is critiquing the work of the painter. talk about contested authority. it is clear i may be a painter and i may be dressed in my artistic garb but i cannot contest to locals to sell my

work to them. again, you can see this here with william matthew prior. he made these portraits for $2.92, which he called his flat and tasty portraits. then if you had more money and more time, you could move up to the much more academically painted portrait. it is not these folks can't paint, necessarily. we have considered them privatives for a long time. in many cases, they are able to choose which vocabulary. a bit like phillips who has different modes he is able to use for different venues. i think what's really interesting here to think about the rooms and places where these goods went, you can see really what is called american fancy. these are furnished homes with growing numbers of factory chairs. this water color interior from

1826 that was called "lord charles and lady sarah." the couple is seated at a drop-leaf table facing each other. on two of the nine fancy chairs that are scattered around the room. the ample number would reflect the relative affluence and their ability to entertain. there is the performance of the entertainment mode that is important. there is a painted window shade and the couple is engaged in a host of refined activities. i think this very much depicts the world into which these goods will go. and then you have others like rufus porter who really is the producer of the how to guides. if you want to paint in his

mode, he uses the as handbill in the new arts of the americas gallery. what is interesting about this is he has a whole range of prices. you can get a silhouette which he uses a camera to throw an image on a piece of paper. or you can get a side-view where he traces the outlines or you can move to a full view. full view, you only get one ear per portrait. it is similar to the silhouette. he still is using some of the speed devices. you get more detail and you also get more modelling in the face. again, it is really a series or the upper end moving to the close here. you get the upper end in a much more cosmo way.

he spent his whole career between the connecticut and hudson river painting. by the 1830s, he has really painted these relatively grand portraits. these are two sisters. again, we don't really know anything. some believe this may have been boston harbor. we don't really know the design sources for this. he has a design for women with the lace collar to fill out the portrait. with the men, this is a man with a tune book. most likely one of the cook family. by 1839, this grand portrait of joseph moore and his family. he drops these figures into this portrait. you can see how louisa is dropped into it in the same fashion.

this is a 14 foot portrait. it occupies the whole wall at the mfa. now you can see the collection. this is a hitchcock chair. these are stencilled forms. they are using the faux painting to make them look more embell h embellished than they might be. the carpet is pushed up to emphasize its placement. it is not falling three dimensions, but it is a cornucopia of goods. it is a portrait of people and their goods. and joseph moore is a hatter the part of the year and dentist the other part of the year. many of the jewelry and chairs are actually passed down. these are their household objects as well as his dental tools which are in the mfa collection. interestingly in 1839, i argue

this represents the hey day and height of the innovation and production with the fancy consumption. in 1839 in terms of portraiture, it is the type of portrait. i spell out many of these innovations can done throughout new england and new york are now replaced instead of wooden shelf clocks, you use a return to brass. stamped brass which is thinner and easier to fabricate from. he works from a variety of venues from new haven and brooklyn. many of these places of work begin to recentralize just like the 18th century back into the urban places and more of a

factory mode. or you get someone like rufus porter who moved to new york. he finds that and robert peckham or someone like arastis field. so you don't have to sit for one of the portraits. he will take a family picture and paints the group portrait from a type. i would argue this is more solid and more boring and much of the exuberance has been diminished by that particular mode. then you get an interesting story with the types because you get the same process of people who go out with urban training and move into the provincial areas looking for a wider more diffused market. in the 1850s, you get

entrepreneurs like hawes and brady. they try to make what they consider the flat portraits. i'm not so sure they are cheap, but this is a plain portrait similar in the mode to the earlier folk portraits. many in the 1830s would want their portraits to look like the early 1800 portraits. much like a direct gaze and romantic shading and a flatter lighting that doesn't privilege the face or side of the face or anything else like that. so, i think what is really interesting here at the very end is that it's really these new household goods that take their place by the 1840s and 1850s in a codified parlor vocabulary.

the works of currier and ives. it is clear what objects and where you can purchase them. this period of provincial fluidity which we spent most of the evening looking at begins to diminish and close. thank you. [ applause ] >> professor jaffee will take questions. if you can come up to the microphone to ask the question so we can capture the sound. >> professor, several slides back, you showed on the film a

very lovely chair. claw legs and beautiful finials and it had golden upholstry. you said it was made by a craftsman. not a factory chair. do you remember the chair? >> are you talking about the hitchcock chair? >> no. i don't think so. it had claw legs. it is just prior to the factory chairs that you showed us. >> okay. >> go back. there you are. now, those chairs were individually made by a crafts person not in a factory, is that

correct? >> yes. i'm trying to figure out. >> were they treated as art form by the colonials much like having a painting on a wall or were they put to use as chairs? or were they put aside on the side of the room to be admired rather than being used? >> both. i mean their primary -- i don't think someone at the time would have separated those two. they would have considered these to be, but i would argue that of the hitchcock share. they are objects to look at and enjoy and show off as well as the primary purpose which is e seating chairs. >> the hitchcock chairs, i understand. this could take an extraordinary amount of time to make a set of

them. i could see one chair. they put it to use? >> yes, yes. we know this from -- whether they are used all the time or every day? in wealthier families you would have used a windsor chair for everyday purposes or lesser rooms. this would have been in a parlor or dining room. but yes, they would have been used. in some cases the ones on the right are for the cadwaller-coldon family. these are large scale rooms. with a hierarchy of spaces. they would have been the best room. similar to the charles bird king portrait although that is a

different family and different house. but when they are not in use they would go around the side of the room. because of their sculpted form the they would catch the light. artificial or natural when the shades are open and so you really would see the carving. and that would have been as you're saying -- what would really catch your eye. so someone at the time would have understood wow this is a top of the line carved chair which has all of those rich accoutrements. when you look at a cabinet maker's price list. you would take the pieces. if you wanted to skirt it would cost so much extra. this leg versus that leg you pay that much more. so i think people at the time understood how these items worked as both seating furniture and as cultural icons. >> this is fascinating.

can i just ask if you lived in a city could you have these middling level objects and portraits available to you? not nerve a city could afford to have these fancy high-style sort of portraits or chairs or things. >> that's a really good question. yes, there are low-end chair makers in the city. they are starting to make also goods for export or not just export but sort of -- and so what i think is interesting is by the late 18th, early 19th century much of the production is local. but in the 1820s and 1830 like with the example of pratt. province could go anywhere in the united states. and hitchcock puts them in barrels and sells them to chicago by the 1840s when chicago is a fairly small place.

i think then the provincial urban breaks down and you are getting something that is more of a national or a regional market. i should not go too far in terms of leavening up the various locales. and that's why i wanted to use the william matthew pryor plat portrait. he is working out of boston. a lot of part-time we emphasize these as folk, meaning rural. it's a more complicated story than that. >> dr. jaffee i appreciated your talk and the variety of things you were looking at. i was fascinated by one of the verbal pieces you put on. the letter from john vanderland senior to junior and the letter concluded with him saying famous

little thought of money is at all and everything. but is there a transition in this period between fame being attached to kraeks to fame being attached to accumulation. now we are famous for the stuff we have rather than the stuff we make. do you see this transition in this period and if that is what the artists are reacting to? >> that is a complicated question. i guess i would gesture to the self identification of some of these artists. rufus porter is an artisan entrepreneur. what you may see is one person considers himself an artisan and the reason i stick all those things together is i really want to break apart the categories of this one's in the art world and this one's in the artisanal or

this is a mechanical and this one is not. this is a mid 19th century r romantic notion. but vanderland is an academic artist. but even though he thinks of himself in a very different world, the world of artists he very much can recognize and -- in the case of phillips here is a way to have one foot in one world and another foot in another world. and many of the folks men and women operating do really have their -- they are able to straddle both of those worlds and -- or get someone like chester harding who starts out as cabinet maker and picks up painting and becomes one of the most well established portrait

artists in boston. and he thinks of himself as a romantic artist. >> thank you for your lecture. was there any evidence in your research have you found any evidence indicating any sort of rebellion against this kind of economic utilitarianism that has is now governing the decorative arts? if you look at the form of chairs, the sheridan chair, the early 19th century chair is very pedestrian with the plank seats and boot turned legs and you compare them to the chippendale chairs have there is no comparison in the form and style and the beauty of the objects. there is a deterioration of the quality of things in terms you look at tall boxes and mirrors. it is formmatic as you have said. is there any sentiment looking back and saying i remember the

good old days when people used to put their heart and soul in these things and now they are cranked out by the thousands? >> i think you pick that up later in the 19th century. that is more of the post-several war generally where you are getting that lament. on the other hand just to be difficult i would argue that when i use the word formulaic i don't mean that in a negative fashion. these ingenious means of satisfying a wider demand. i think the art market or these later laments which come out of arts and crafts or esthetic movements we denigrate them. but i think at the time. that's why i showed the phillips most folks would be happy to have the same portrait as the person down the road. you may think i don't want my

daughter depicted in the same standardized form as my neighbor but i don't think that is true in 1820. and so that's why i wanted to use that term american fancy. we think of this as this overly sbub rant flattened style. but i think again they're quite thrilled and don't see that as a loss compared to 18th century modes. but thank you. i think that's a critical point. >> is it possible to generalize about what happens to these itinerant artists? do they catch on in this industrialized system or what did they wind up doing? >> that's a great question. i think again in my own exuberance i tend to pump up --

there are winners and losers all along the way. so i think that's really important and there are many people who even if a lot of folks can afford six chairs who don't have but one chair. and then the whole question this is -- i'm going to get to your answer in a second. richard bushman talks about in the 18th century very few people were refined. so it wasn't bad to be unrefined. everyone else was unrefined and there is no shame. but by the 1850s, the middling classes there is a thinner band of unrefined. so it is far more shameful to do without. in this great transformation. this is the great transformation looked at in a different way. there are losers. chauncey jerome, the clock maker, yes he moves to this brass clock making.