The symposium will be held on Friday, October 17th at the Litchfield Community Center. The day will end with a reception and tour of the exhibition. The Symposium speakers will discuss new research on furniture making during the late 18th and early 19th centuries in southern New England.

Cost: $85 for non-members and $70 for members of the Litchfield Historical Society.

Symposium brochures will be mailed in mid-summer. For more information please call 860-567-4501 or e-mail cfields@litchfieldhistoricalsociety.org.

Symposium speakers and topics:

Edward S. Cooke, Jr.: Charles F. Montgomery Professor of Decorative Arts, Yale University, New Haven, CT

Introduction: New Directions in Furniture Studies

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Derin Bray: Furniture Historian, Litchfield County Furniture Project, Portsmouth, NH

Diversity Within: The Furniture & Furniture Makers of Litchfield County, Connecticut, 1780-1810: Litchfield County was home to four distinct social and economic sub-regions in the late colonial and early National periods. As a result, there was great diversity in furniture making practices from one town to the next. While the cosmopolitan shop of Silas Cheney employed Hartford-trained cabinetmakers to make sophisticated inlaid furniture, shops in the iron-mining towns of Sharon and Salisbury relied on native talent who were as apt at making chests of drawers as they were at crafting molds for large cannons and guns. This talk presents research gleaned from a one-year study to better understand these many furniture making traditions and their relationship to the rich and diverse economy of Litchfield County, Connecticut.

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Brock Jobe: Professor of American Decorative Arts, Winterthur Museum, Winterthur, DE

Harbor and Home: Furniture of Southeastern Massachusetts, 1710-1850: This talk explores the furniture of a little-studied region stretching from south of Boston to Providence and east to the tip of Cape Cod and the islands of Nantucket and Martha’s Vineyard.  The many coastal communities throughout the area maintained commercial ties with the larger cities of Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and Newport, as well as distant ports in Europe.  As a result, southeastern Massachusetts residents had access to both stylish imports and locally made wares.  In addition, the region supported a sizable number of clockmakers during the early 19th century.  Their products—today numbering nearly 400 tall and dwarf clocks—attest to the caliber of craftsmanship practiced in the area. 

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Patricia Kane: Curator of Decorative Arts, Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, CT

Beyond Goddard and Townsend: Furniture making in Eighteenth-Century Rhode Island: The Goddard-Townsend school is among the most illustrious in American furniture. The appellation so dominates the field that little furniture by other Rhode Island makers has been identified. This talk will present new discoveries made through research for the Yale University Rhode Island Furniture Archive.

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Robert Trent: Independent Furniture Scholar, Former Curator at Winterthur and at the Connecticut Historical Society, Wilmington, DE

The Dutch and Connecticut Furniture Before 1720: An On-going Research project: Recent work in western and central portions of the state has found evidence of direct Dutch influence on early furniture. In some cases, the influence is quite apparent, while in others the influence is difficult to detect. Similar research on Dutch architectural influence conducted one hundred years ago suggests that Dutch influence may be more pervasive than previous art historians have thought.