them down the blackstone canal to providence, as they are distributed throughout the united states. at the same time, the production begins in gardner. but gardner takes a different road. in the 180s they invest their energy not making the chair in a decentralized mode but rather they invest in machinery, so they use water power more and more, and so they bring production inside the factory. so instead of an outwork system, they use a factory system. and over time, by the 1830s, gardner really pushes ahead of sterling. what is really important to me is from my argument in the 18-teens, 1820s, pratt makes 18,000 chairs a year in the hand mode system. that's a phenomenal amount of chairs. again it's really within this older handwork system, you can make lots of things as you speed it up. it's not really the machinery that is the cutting edge at all.

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 what we know is the most popular chair at the time which is the hitchcock chair. lambert hitchcock really brings all that production home, and again, sort of like my sideboard, uses much more simplified turning so you can make these much faster. he puts the gold striping. the gold striping extends to the front of the chair. if you were to turn it around, you'd see it wouldn't have that striping on the back. there are all sorts of labor-saving techniques. he now uses a stencil for the painting instead of freehand painting, which you'd find in more expensive items. 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's too cosmopolitan. it's too high end. actually, we discovered through a variety of papers and other objects that spooner probably had an apprentice in his shop who really helped him integrate some of these newer techniques and again, in terms of materiality, look at these ovals. it is really quite striking, the design. you are getting really high-end s could poll tan furniture, which is being made in a whole network of places. you have the more mass produced goods being made at the same time as you are also getting this much fancier material. and pushing this argument not just for clocks and chairs, i would really argue that even in terms of portraits, you are getting the same phenomena of

increasingly innovative and itinerant modes of production to make more and more goods which have the incredibly colorful cornucopia painted form which sumter predious calls the american fancy, which is the provincial style in the 1820s and 1830s. what is interesting here is this is ammi phillips. "girl with red dress." he makes lots of girls with red dresses, and some have cats and dogs. some just have cats, i'm sorry -- yeah, and some which are actually boys on the left-hand side. he also changes the color of the garment on others. in other cases, he drops the child sort of miniaturizes her and drops her onto the lap of her mother. what he has really done is developed a formula. these are formulaic images. which all have similar shapes,

similar decorative designs. he has, they are 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, who is an academic painter, 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 who is moving through the countryside really meting demand. unlike an urban station where you have a painter in a studio where customers come to him, these itinerants in a less saturated market are moving throughout the countryside to find customers and then holing

up in a place and passing out handbills to attract customers. they are really cultivating a market where possibly a market didn't exist before. they really are advertising not just their services but they are 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, without apprentices p apprenticeship. there's really a whole contest as to who is an artist and i can very easily claim as other folks i write about do, that i'm an artist, put my statement out there, and then start painting literally. so it's really, it's the fluidity of these 1820s, and really 18-teens, 1820s. i call it a period of itineracy and 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 very much the efforts of the host of decentralized producers and sort of araviste consumers. and i think you can see that a bit in this genre scene by charles bird king. he sort of lampoon this is whole -- although he moved to washington, d.c., and became an academic painter, he had a stint as an itinerant in the countryside. you can see the best room through the doorway where the portrait will go when it is finished. it will be the fanciest room in the house, but on the other hand, you can see it's a very gendered scene. the women are gathered around the mother who is the sitter for the portrait while the men with guns are heading out for more robust masculine activities while the grandmother is critiquing the work of the

painter. so again talking about contested authority, it's very clear that i may be a painter. i may be dressed in my more artistic garb but i don't have that much cultural authority to protest the locals' opinion of my work, much less to sell it to them. again, you can see this here with william matthew prior. prior made two kinds of portraits. 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. which i think again is the fact that we've considered them primitives for a long time. it's rather in many cases, not all, they are able to choose which vocabulary, a bit like phillips, who has different modes that he's 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. rather than the restraint of the late 18th century, these are furnished homes with growing numbers of factory chairs, celestial and this water color interior from about 1826 she called "lord charles and lady sarah," the two in the watercolor, perhaps a real couple, are seated at a drop-leaf table facing each other. two of the nine fancy chairs that are scattered around the room. the ample number would reflect i would say their relative affluence, as well as their ability to entertain. there is now the performance, the entertainment mode that's very important. there is a painted window shade and a stenciled frame, wall mirror, and again the couple is engaged in a whole 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. to help you, if you want to actually paint in his mode, he uses, and this is an aas handbill that's now actually in the mfa boston, the new arts of the americas galleries, and what's so interesting about this handle is again he has a whole range of prices. you can get a silhouette which he uses a camera obscured to throw an image on to a piece of paper and he's able to use a mechanized device for a speed of production. 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. so it's really very similar to the silhouette. he still is using some of the speed devices. you get more detail and you also get more modeling in the face.

again, it is really a series or the upper end, moving toward the close here, you get the upper end in a much more cosmopolitan way, you get a man who spent his whole career sort of between the connecticut and the hudson river painting. by the 1830s, he has really painted these relatively grand manner really not grand manor, 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 formula for women where he uses a lace collar and other devices to sort of fill out the portrait. with the men using, this is a man with a tune book, most likely one of the cooke family, and then by 1839, this grand portrait of joseph moore and his

family, which is also in the mfa. he really drops these figures into this portrait. if you looked at it again, you can see how louisa is sort of 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 stenciled forms. they are using the faux painting to make them look more embellished than they might be. the carpet is sort of pushed up really to emphasize its placement, so again, it's not following a sort of three dimensions perspective but rather the fact it's a whole cornucopia of goods. it's a portrait just as much of the people and their goods. and joseph moore is a hatter part of the year and dentist the other part of the year.

and the mfa has many of the family, so many of the jewelry and other items, the 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 heyday, the hype and the passing of the innovation and decentralized production and sort of fancy consumption because of course in 1839 in terms of portraiture, it is the invention of the degariotype, which is a truly mechanized form of portraitture and i try at the end of the book to spell out many of these innovative activities which are done in a host of different vocations throughout new england and new york are now replaced instead of wooden shelf clocks you get chauncey jerome which uses a return to brass, not imported brass anymore but this is stamped brass, much thinner and much easier to fabricate from, and he works from a

variety of venues, including new haven and brooklyn, and so many of these provincial workplaces, places of work begin to recentralize, just like in the 18th century back into sort of urban places and more of a factory mode. or you get someone like rufus porter who moved to new york. and found scientific american. he finds that and robert peckham or someone like arastis field. who starts to use degariotypes for his portraiture. 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 degariotype. 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 degariotypes,

because you get the same process of itinerants 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. but my argument, what i leave you with, i'm not so sure they are cheap, but this is a plain portrait similar in the mode to the earlier folk portraits. many of the folks in the 1840s would have wanted their portrait to look like those earlier painted portraits, one that has much more of sort of a direct gaze rather than a more romantic shading and one that has sort of flatter lighting that really doesn't privilege the face or the 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. that signifies taste and refinement in the work of kurrier and ives. it is a formulaic vocabulary. it is very much clear what objects and where you can purchase them. this period of provincial itinerancy and 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 here to ask a question, that way we'll be able to capture the sound. >> professor, several slides back, you showed on the film a very lovely chair. it had claw legs, beautiful finials, and it had golden upholstery. you it he fined it as a chair individually made by a craftsperson. it was not a factory chair. do you recall that chair? >> are you talking about the hitchcock chair? >> no. i don't think it was a hitchcock, know. 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 craftsperson, 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 chair as well. they are objects to look at and enjoy and show off as well as the primary purpose which is

seating furniture. >> the hitchcock chairs, i understand would be used, but to make a set of these, one could understand, it would take an extended period of time to make a set of them, to make one, one could understand that, wanting to take this and make it one chair. >> right and the one on -- yeah. >> they could put it to use, right? >> yes, why he. we know this from whether they were used all the time or every day. even in wealthier families you would have used a windsor chair possibly for more every day purposes or for lesser rooms. this would have been in a parlor or dining room. but yes, they would have been used. they would often, in some cases the ones on the right by thomas affleck are for the cadwaller-coldon family. in philadelphia. so they go into coldon's mansion, and again, these are really large scale homes with

lots of rooms, with a whole hierarchy of different spaces, so they would have been going in the sort of best room, similar to the best room that you saw in the charles bird king portrait, although that's a very different kind of family and very different kind of house. but when they are not in use they would go around the side of the room. so they would, because of their sculpted form would, 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 really would catch your eye. so someone at the time would have very much understood wow, this is at top-of-the-line carvd chair which has all of those rich acute remits. 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 i think people understood how they worked as seating furniture and cultural icons. >> this is fascinating. can i ask if you lived in a city, could you have the objects and 54 trades available to you? not everybody in the city could afford to have these fancy high style portraits or things. >> that's a really good question. yes, there also low end chair makers in the city. they are starting to make goods for export and not just export, but what i think is interesting, the 19th century, most of the production is local. by the 1820s and 1830s like when

i used the example of practicing moving out of providence could go anywhere in the united states and live caulk breaks it down and puts them in barrels and sells them to chicago by the 1840s. chicago is a fairly small place. then the provincial urban breaks down and you are getting something else, more of a national or at least a regional market. i want to not go too far in terms of linking up to various locales. that's why i worked with them in a flat portrait out of boston. i mean folk, meaning rural, more complicated than that. >> i really appreciated your talk and the variety of things that you are looking at.

i was fascinated by one of the verbal pieces, but the letter senior to junior, that letter concluded by saying fame is little thought of. money is all and everything. that's a pret et standard artist complaint. it meat me think of, is there a transition between fame being a catch two accumulation? we are up there for the stuff we have rather than the stuff we make. i am wondering if see that transition in this period and if that's what artists are reacting to. >> that's complicated. i guess it would be that the self identification of many of these artists, they were really considering themselves an artisan entrepreneur. between vandterland and

phillips, one person who considers himself an artisan and the reason i stick all of these things together is i want to break apart the categories of this one in the art world and this one is mechanical and this is not. this is later in the mid-19th century romantic notion. of course vanderland is an academic artist in a different conversation. here it's even though he thinks of himself in a different world, the world of artists, he can recognize in the case of phillips is here's a way to have one foot in one world and another in another world. many folks, men and women, do really have a straddle, both of those worlds. get someone like harding who

starts out as a cabinet maker and picks up painting and then of course becomes one of the most well-established academic people in boston. by then when he writes his biography, he thinks of himself as a romantic artist. >> thank you for your lecture. in your research, have you found any evidence indicating rebellion against this kind of economic utilitarianism that is now governing the odds? if you look at fall of the chairs, the early 19th century chair, it is very, very pedestrian and very with the plank seats and compare those to some of the chippendales chairs, there is no comparison w the form and the style and the beauty of the objects and it

seems to be kind of a deterioration of the quality of things in terms of the blocks and the mirrors. it's all very formula mattic, as you said. i remember the good old days when people used to put their heart and soul into those things and now they are cranked up by the thousands. >> i think you picked that up later and that's more of course the post civil war, but on the other hand to be difficult i would argue when i use that word formulaic, i don't mean that in a negative fashion. i think these are ingenious means of satisfying a wider demand. i think the art market or these later things that come out of the arts and crafts or esthetic

movement feelings then of course denigrate. that's why i showed this. think most f would be quite happy to have the same portrait as the person down the road. you and i may think i don't want my daughter to do exactly the same standardized form as my neighbor, but i don't think that would be true in 1820. that's why i wanted to use that term american fancy. i think again we think of this as an overly exuberant flattened style, but they are quite thrilled and don't see that as a loss compared to the 18th century. but thank you. i think that's critical. >> is it possible to generalize what happened to the artisans after this new system takes over.

not everyone moves to town and starts of course it american. do they catch on in the new system or what did a lot of them wind up doing? >> that's a great question. in exuberance, i tend to pump up how wonderful. there winners and losers all along the way. i think that's important. many people who even if lots of folks can afford six chair who is don't have but one chair. the whole question, i will get to your answer in a second, they talk about the 18th century and most people were refined. it wasn't bad to be unrefined. there is no shame. by the 1850s, they have adopted.

in this great transformation. there rules here. someone like jerome, the clock maker. he does move to this clock making, but the level now to be running the new haven clock company, the capitalization because of the machinery and number of workers has risen so much unlike the workshop mode where it's easy to open up a shop. the capitalization in 1837 or after 1837, he loses everything. so the entry into these increases. it becomes much harder. in bristol, there was 35.

he is no longer an entrepreneur. he has been demoted at age 60. it's a generational story of people coming of age in the revolutionary era. their careers come to the mid-19th century. >> thank you very much. >> thank you.