NEW HAVEN, CONN.- The Yale University Art Gallery presents the most comprehensive survey to date of colonial and early Federal-period furniture made in Rhode Island, including elaborately carved chairs, high chests, bureau tables, and clocks. The exhibition brings together more than 130 exceptional objects from museums, historical societies, and private collections across the country, highlighting major aesthetic innovations developed throughout the region. In addition to iconic, stylish pieces from important centers of production like Providence and Newport, the exhibition showcases simpler examples made in smaller towns—such as East Greenwich and Westerly—and for export. The exhibition also addresses the surprisingly broad reach of Rhode Island’s furniture production, from the boom of the export trade starting about 1740 and its steady growth throughout the 18th century to the gradual decline of the handcraft tradition in the 19th century. Showcasing over 100 pieces of furniture alongside paintings, silver, and other objects from the period, the exhibition is a tribute to the art and the industry of early American craftsmen.

The dynamic and active cabinetmaking trade of colonial and Federal-period Rhode Island has intrigued scholars of American decorative arts for more than a century. Despite this considerable interest, however, there has not been a major survey on the subject since 1965. Art and Industry in Early America: Rhode Island Furniture, 1650–1830 is the most complete survey of Rhode Island furniture ever assembled, including not only acknowledged masterpieces but also objects from areas that heretofore have received little scholarly attention. Drawing on more than a decade of research for the Rhode Island Furniture Archive (rifa.art.yale.edu), the exhibition has yielded exciting new discoveries, such as the identity of the maker of the Gallery’s magnificent desk and bookcase, now attributed to Daniel Spencer.

The Colony of Rhode Island was settled in 1636, after the Massachusetts Bay and Plymouth Colonies and at about the same time as the Connecticut Colony. An atmosphere of tolerance made Rhode Island a destination for Baptists, Quakers, Jews, and other religious sects that were treated with hostility in Massachusetts. Since the colony was smaller than its neighbors, there was less 17th-century furniture made there, and even less of it survives. Following a chronological path, the exhibition begins with a few examples of early joined furniture from the Swansea, Massachusetts (now Warren, Rhode Island), area that feature geometric floral ornament specific to the region.

Though previous scholars have identified some tables, stools, and banister-back chairs as having been made in Rhode Island between 1700 and 1740, case furniture—such as high chests and desks—and other types of chairs from this period have not been well understood. Thanks to the in-depth analysis of stylistic details, construction, and materials undertaken for the Rhode Island Furniture Archive, some veneered case pieces have been reattributed to the colony, thereby deepening the understanding of the early 18th-century furniture trade. High chests of drawers as well as desks with burl-veneered facades and vertical bands of inlay are on display alongside chairs whose legs feature the distinctive Rhode Island compressed ball turnings.

The period from 1740 to 1780 saw the golden age of furniture making in Rhode Island, centered in Newport and Providence. In Newport, the brothers Job and Christopher Townsend, their descendants, and their apprentices led the industry, a status made evident by objects such as the elaborate desk and bookcase by Christopher Townsend (1745–50), a highlight of the exhibition. During this period, Rhode Island furniture makers began carving shells, a classic element of Baroque design, out of dense mahogany with a voluptuousness and fluidity rarely matched. In marrying the shell motif to the block-front form, they created some of the great masterpieces of American furniture, such as the bureau table (1764) in the exhibition by Job Townsend’s son, Edmund. This section of the installation brings together a few examples of Providence and Bristol, Rhode Island, furniture ornamented with compass-star inlay and light and dark stringing—decorative motifs usually associated with Massachusetts—as well as furniture by newly discovered makers from some of Rhode Island’s smaller towns, including a curly maple high chest of drawers attributed to Amos Stafford, Jr., and most likely crafted in Coventry.

After the Revolution, Newport struggled to rebuild, having been occupied by the British during the war. Providence, which had not been occupied, came into its own during this period, with expanded trade and manufacturing. Rhode Island became the center of Windsor chairmaking in New England, producing spritely examples of this popular seating form on tall, tapering legs. Originally used as outdoor seating in English gardens, Windsor chairs became popular in the new nation as seating for civic spaces such as town halls and colony houses. Also on view are examples of early Federal-period Rhode Island furniture, characterized by distinctive pictorial inlay patterns, such as bellflowers and paterae, on tables and case pieces. A card table attributed to James Halyburton and made in Warren, for instance, depicts a beautiful floral pattern along its skirt and upper legs. After 1805, Rhode Island furniture makers, influenced by the designs of English cabinetmaker and designer Thomas Sheraton, moved away from these pictorial inlays, instead using contrasting veneers and turned reeded or fluted legs to ornament their objects.

In the early to mid-19th century, Rhode Island furniture was more directly inspired by that of Boston and New York, whose rising influence would eventually eclipse the craft and business of cabinetmaking in Rhode Island. However, for more than a century, Rhode Island craftsmen produced objects that combined artistry and industry, design and engineering. Their furniture graced the homes of early America, from the grand to the humble, and was shipped to ports both near and far, fueling Rhode Island’s commercial economy and the network of Atlantic trade.

To better elucidate the craft and artistry that went into making these varied furniture forms, Art and Industry in Early America features several videos that demonstrate how Rhode Island furniture was made. The videos show contemporary craftsmen making a banister-back chair; carving a reproduction of a 17th-century wainscot chair; and demonstrating techniques for creating various types of ornamentation and construction, including claw-and-ball feet, shells, and dovetail joints. Interpretive materials reveal secret compartments and makers’ marks. A musical tall case clock, created by Thomas Claggett around 1775 and recently restored to working order, melodiously marks the hour.