by Leigh Keno
As calamitous as this type of alteration sounds, it's often not a major issue, which was the case with the Tillinghast pieces. To restore the high chest to its original form—which, judging from the room's low ceilings, wasn't going to be done here—the bonnet top simply needed to be lifted out of its current thin-legged frame and returned to its original base (which was covered with an easily removable single-board top). In short, the changes, which probably dated to the early twentieth century, were easily reversible. They didn't detract from the overall integrity of the piece.
The Tillinghast suite as I first saw it, with the high chest's top (right) mounted on a makeshift set of legs and the base sitting solo. The tea table stands between the divided piece.
When I look at furniture for the first time, I like to scan the piece and then zoom in on points of interest. Bells go off as I mentally go through a checklist of quality-related issues. When I began to examine the separated bonnet-top chest more closely, I marveled at the symmetrical arched S curves of the hood, an eloquent and more costly alternative to a flat top, which was a classic design favored by Newport cabinetmakers. The drawer fronts and case were crafted of a rich dark plum-pudding mahogany that glowed in the warmth of what little sun filtered through the curtained windows. This type of reddish purple mottled mahogany was, of course, a favorite with early Newport craftsmen. Punctuating the decorative surface was a lively progression of openwork brass pulls that marked each drawer front. My guess was that they had come from Birmingham, England, the industrial town that was home to many of the brass foundries that supplied the colonies.
Morgan watched approvingly while everyone else (excluding a rather bored-looking Freya) regarded me with considerable curiosity as I studied the construction details. I pulled out a drawer from the bonnet top and another from the separated base and began to make comparisons between them. What I found there was remarkable, and identical, workmanship that further confirmed that the two objects had begun life as one. In each instance, the drawer sides were thin and delicate, with rounded edges at the top. Both were constructed of poplar, the same wood Leslie had noticed in use on the drawer sides of the Gibbs block-front bureau that he found near Fort Ticonderoga. Next, I compared the openwork brass pulls on the front of the drawers, which also seemed to match. The posts that held the brasses in place had hand-cut threads (the spiraling grooves running down the length of the shaft) and were tapered, a sure sign that the posts were of the period. And like Leslie during his examination of the Gibbs piece, I was pleased to see there were no additional holes visible where the irregularly cut nuts that anchored the posts met the backs of the drawer, which suggested that they had probably never been removed or replaced.
I then turned the two drawers toward the sunlight to examine the wedge-shaped dovetails where the drawer sides met. Each joint was perfectly cut to a fine point and was spaced with the precision typical of the work of the Goddards and Townsends. Even the marks left by the kerfing saw used to cut the individual dovetail grooves (which could be seen on the inside of each drawer) were identical.
Characteristically refined and elegant Goddard dovetails.
The high chest's legs boast classic Newport knee carving and highly articulated claw-and-ball feet.
I returned the drawers to their respective slots and turned my full attention to the details of the base. Morgan helped me lift the television set off the top and move the piece closer to the window, where Freya was now regarding our fierce attention to the furniture with perplexity and perhaps a little envy. Even by the window, however, the viewing light was poor, so I took a flashlight out of my bag before continuing with my work.
I began with the legs, which had wonderful peaked (or squared) knees that were covered in low-relief intaglio carving. The cabinetmaker squared the legs in order to continue the angled line of the chest's front corners into the legs below. It also provided him with two equal and distinct surfaces for decorative carving. When I raked my flashlight beam across each of the legs, the symmetrical palmetto-and-leaf pattern came alive. I was thrilled to see this particular design, because the style and execution of the carving were very familiar to me and pointed to one craftsman in particular, John Goddard of Newport. Goddard was, of course, the same man whose shop had produced the chairs found in the New Jersey chicken coop.
In fact, the carving on the legs of the high chest's base reminded me of a famous tea table that descended in the family of the wealthy Providence merchant Jabez Bowen (1739—1815). That tea table, which is now in the collection of the Winterthur Museum, features nearly identical squared cabriole legs with the same pattern of intaglio leaf carving. It is documented as having been made by John Goddard, and the particulars I recalled of its carved detail really strengthened my belief that the piece I was looking at was probably made by Goddard, as well. This type of comparison—that between previously unknown objects and other, documented examples—is the lifeblood of furniture research. It is why you can never look at enough furniture or pictures of furniture. The learning process always continues.
When the Tillinghast chest of drawers first came out of the shop in the 1760s or 1770s, the mahogany surface would have carried a number of coats of varnish, meant to give it a reflective quality. Now, as I examined the wood in a strong light, I could detect the small knots of the plum-pudding mahogany coming through the old darkened finish of the piece, just as it had on the bonnet top. As expected, two centuries' worth of dust and pollutants had settled onto the more horizontal elements of the structure and darkened them, while the vertical parts had stayed comparatively clean. It's rather like the face of a cliff—moss doesn't grow On the front; it grows in the nooks and crannies.
I took my hand and ran it along the large concave shell that filled the center of the skirt. It was a single, grandly proportioned version of the shells that Leslie had examined so closely on the Gibbs bureau. The shell's fluted body was bold and elegant and, like the Gibbs examples, featured a stop-fluted central intaglio detail at the base, designed in imitation of the muscles at a shell's base (the part that you rip when you pry it open). Recently, scholars have speculated that Newport craftsmen collectively used this distinctive, highly stylized version of a shell on their furniture designs (think of the smaller convex versions seen on the crest rails of the chairs from the chicken coop) as a form of brand identification or advertising (like the winged figural hood ornament on a Rolls-Royce). The reason for this is that eighteenth-century Newport (like many other Colonial ports) had a strong export economy that relied upon venture cargo or goods that were sent out on spec. Finished furniture constituted one such commodity, and a fair number of pieces built by the Goddards and Townsends were designed for sale in other ports. It may have been the cabinetmakers hope that their superior designs would come to be recognized and associated with that unusual signature shell. It had certainly worked on Morgan more than two hundred years after the Tillinghast furniture was made.
Stepping back for a moment, I tried to visualize the two halves of the high chest as they would look when they were reunited. I quickly discounted the two urn-shaped finials mounted on. the upper ends of the bonnet top, as well as the third one, which marked the center. They were no doubt later additions, because their Neoclassical Revival style postdated the rest of the design by at least twenty years. These were details that had probably been added at the time the chest was divided in the late nineteenth or early twentieth century, and their presence was minor and reversible.
As excited as I was about the high chest, however, it was the tea table that really blew me away. Just as Morgan had told me, the eloquent cabriole legs of the table ended in rare open-talon claw-and-ball feet. They stood in stark contrast to the closed-talon variety I'd just seen on the legs of the high chest's base, which were emphatically beautiful, although slightly less sculptural. The talons on the tea table were so open that I could almost slip a small pencil between the claw and the ball. They also called to mind Jabez Bowen's tea table at Winte
rthur, with its open-taloned feet. There as here, the carver (by now, I was certain he was John Goddard) had played up the tension of the form by pairing delicate, slender ankles with sharply articulated tendons and animal-like swollen-jointed toes. The juxtaposition of these elements was powerful and evocative. Goddard's gift was his ability to pour life into his carved work. Looking at the feet, I felt as if I could take the pulse of the creature that clasped the balls.
A few of the talons were actually missing from the Tillinghast table, which I took as a good sign. Freestanding talons are fairly fragile, and some damage is nearly inevitable over the years. Seeing this, however, made me think we should look around for a broom to sweep the floors in case any of the pieces were still about. But when I examined the feet more closely, I saw the wood had darkened and oxidized at the breakage points, which meant the fractures were old.
By now, Morgan had a relaxed smile on his face (his good eye had been confirmed), Freya was clearly yearning for the beach, and the Tillinghasts seemed impressed that I was paying such extended attention to their furniture. I picked up the table and marveled at its extreme weight. The very best pieces from the Goddard and Townsend cabinet shops were constructed from only the highest-quality mahogany, which tends to be unusually dense. I flipped the table over and set it down on the carpet. As I aimed the flashlight, the beam flickered across the unmistakable channel marks of an eighteenth-century planing tool, which ran perpendicular to the wood grain. Meanwhile, along the perimeter of the board, where it met the top of the skirt, was a more agitated lined pattern, like the surface of a ruffled potato chip, left by a toothing plane. The cabinetmaker texturized the wood this way, roughening the surface to give the glue a better grip between the top and frame. If any similar tooling marks had been left visible on the show surfaces of the piece, the craftsman would have sanded it away with a piece of shagreen, a material that comes from the rough skin of certain sharks or stingrays.
Also caught in the beam of my flashlight as I shone it on the underside of the table was a scrawled chalk inscription of the initials W.T., written in an eighteenth-century hand. I looked over at Frank and his mother. “Do you have any ancestors who had the initials W.T.?” I asked.
Frank shrugged and glanced at his mother. “William was a popular name in my husband's family for many generations,” she told me.
I straightened up and turned off my flashlight. It was incredible to realize that after looking at those two magnificent pieces—both real stars—there was still a dining table sitting in the front hall. The table was set against the staircase wall between a pair of Victorian-looking chairs. Its two semicircular leaves were folded down. Standing on its narrow rectangular exposed top was a large stoneware jug with an incised blue bird that had been turned into a lamp. I placed my hand on the lamp to steady it and picked up one of the folded ends to feel the heft of the piece. Cut from solid, dense mahogany wood, it felt like it weighed a ton. I looked underneath the table at the frame and saw supportive cross braces made of maple, which were typical of Newport construction. But it was the feet of the table, with their closed-talon claw-and-ball design that matched the feet displayed on the high chest, that confirmed what I already suspected: Here was yet a third object by John Goddard.
I drew a sigh, closed my eyes for a moment, and then turned to the assembled group. Mrs. Tillinghast had taken a seat on one of the small Victorian chairs in the hallway, Frank and Morgan were quietly leaning against a wall, and Freya was impatiently looking out a window by the front door, wondering what had happened to her Hamptons weekend. Filtered through the window, the steady stream of Montauk Highway traffic passing by not thirty yards from the house could be clearly heard. How many had passed by over the years, unaware of the great treasures just a stone's throw away? How many other houses have I driven by that contain similar undiscovered treasures?
Because I didn't want to overwhelm the Tillinghasts with a lot of technical talk, I began by telling them how privileged I felt I was to have seen the furniture. These were some of the most amazing pieces I had encountered in my career, I said, and I very much wanted to handle them. I interpreted each object for them in fairly general terms and then I began to talk about the market for Americana, which by 1989 was still steadily gaining momentum. The auction world can be an intimidating place for many people, even those who are quite savvy about furniture, and I tried to play that issue to my advantage. Morgan and I would offer a “sure thing,” with no risk at all. Of course, he and I did not immediately name a price for the group because we needed to assess our own resources. I was still a young dealer with limited finances and Morgan had never dealt with this caliber of merchandise before. It was going to be a stretch for us both. We asked for a little more time.
Within twenty-four hours, however, Morgan went to see Frank at the Chicken House with an offer that was upward of $600,000. “You should have seen his face,” he reported back to me. “Frank looked as if I had just told him he had lost his home and he would have to sleep on the street. He was stunned.”
Amazed as he was, however, Frank was actually far from making a decision. We later learned that the size of the offer made him nervous, so he had gone to his accountant for advice, who had recommended a local lawyer, who in turn suggested he get a second opinion. That is how a set of photographs of the Tillinghast suite of furniture ended up in the hands of my old boss at Christie's, Dean Failey.
For as long as I have known Dean, he has always had a keen interest in the history of his native Long Island. In fact, he wrote the definitive book on Long Island furniture and decorative arts back in the mid-1970s (recently revised), so when he heard about a group of furniture with a long history of local ownership, I'm sure he was intensely intrigued. Not surprisingly, after seeing the pieces, he set about trying to bring them to auction.
Once Frank had a proposal from Christie's in hand, he still wanted time to weigh his options—a sure sale with a fixed price to Morgan and me, or a less certain sale at Christie's. By now, Morgan was making regular stops at the Chicken House, thinking we were close to a deal. Imagine his surprise, then, when he learned from Frank that Dean Failey had entered the picture. He couldn't get to the nearest pay phone fast enough to let me know.
With the Tillinghasts entertaining other options, we knew we had to come up with more money if we expected to clinch the deal. The problem was that we didn't have the finances between us to float the sale alone. We decided it was time to connect directly with a buyer and see if we could broker a commissioned deal instead of an outright sale.
From the moment I heard Morgan's story, I had had one buyer in mind for these pieces: the longtime East Coast collector whose interest in Newport furniture had precipitated my conversation with Morgan at Christie's East. He was a man who was so consumed by his hobby that he retained a full-time curator to maintain his collection. I had been aware of the collector's reputation long before we first met, nearly a year earlier, on a flight from New York's La Guardia Airport (confusing me for Leslie, whom he already knew, he had given me a hearty greeting). Now I placed a call to him and explained how spectacular the pieces were and just where Morgan and I had left off in the negotiations. Knowing how much a historical context adds value to fine objects, I'd also done some additional research on the Tillinghasts to see if I could learn anything about their early ties to Newport or about the mysterious W.T behind the initials on the tea table.
A look through the East Hampton town records revealed that both the Tillinghast and Townsend families had eighteenth-century roots in East Hampton and Newport and that for a time, members of the two families even owned ships together. This was just the type of connection that I was looking for—one that established that the Tillinghasts must have been aware of the furniture productions of the Townsends and further suggested that the Tillinghasts had the means to transport large furniture across Long Island Sound from one port town to the other. Unfortunately, though, I couldn't narrow down which of the many William
Tillinghasts had scrawled his initials on the underside of that table.
Nonetheless, this history, along with the pictures that I had sent by overnight mail to my client and my professional assurances regarding the rarity and value of the furniture, convinced the collector that he could and should up the ante. He told me to make an offer on his behalf that exceeded the figure Morgan and I had last presented, information that I promptly passed on to Frank.
Time passed. Summer drew to a close. Freya moved to Paris to pursue her career as a model…but Frank Tillinghast did not respond to my latest offer. I couldn't understand the holdup. Finally, one evening, from my apartment in New York, I gave in to my frustration and called him.
When Frank heard my voice, he said with complete nonchalance, “Oh, Leigh, I should have let you know. Mother decided to put the furniture up for auction in New York. Christie's is coming tomorrow to pick it up.” When I heard his words, I felt as if a tremendous iron door was slowly closing shut in front of me. All I could do was try one last time to wedge my foot back in.
“Frank, from the start I was honest with you and told you these were important pieces that I would be honored to handle,” I said. “I still feel that way. As a dealer, I'm incredibly excited to work with furniture that has never been seen by others in the field. It's like uncovering a hidden treasure—and it's what I am about; it's what makes me tick. We've been working together for months now. What can I do to make this happen?”
“Well, Leigh, I don't know,” Frank said tentatively.
But I did know. I asked Frank to give me an hour and then hung up the phone. I sat for a moment, took a deep breath, and then called my client.
Forty-five minutes later, I was on the phone again with the deli owner. My heart was racing as I made a final offer. “Frank,” I asked in as even a tone as I could muster, “would we have a deal if I offered you one million dollars?”