ON VIEW

Herter Brothers, New York's best-known nineteenth-century interior furnishings firm, led the American Aesthetic movement of the last quarter of the nineteenth century, a movement that sought to reform the excessive nature and declining quality of the decorative arts. The German-born and trained half brothers, Gustave (1830-1898) and Christian Herter (1840-1883), established their business in 1865, five years after Christian's arrival in the United States. By this time, Gustave, who had emigrated to New York in 1848, had already formed and dissolved several partnerships with other highly skilled cabinetmakers such as Auguste Pottier and Erastus Bulkley. Christian Herter's trips to Paris and England during the 1860s exposed him to the tenets of the Aesthetic movement just as it was taking hold in those countries. One of the leading English reformers, E.W. Godwin, specialized in the Anglo-Japanesque designs that would distinguish Herter Brothers from other American furniture designers. It is quite likely that Christian Herter had firsthand knowledge of Godwin's designs.

After the Civil War, a number of revival styles in furniture design enjoyed moments of popularity, but none offered as wide a range of interpretive possibilities as the Renaissance revival. Loosely based on the architecture of sixteenth-and seventeenth-century Italy, the Renaissance-revival style could also incorporate neo-Grec, Moorish, Egyptian, and other historical motifs, often layered atop one another. This parlor cabinet is an excellent example of the ebullient, eclectic style. While best known for its later outstanding Anglo-Japanesque designs, Herter Brothers developed its exclusive clientele and established its reputation for exquisite marquetry by furnishing mansions in the Renaissance-revival style.

The survival of this cabinet's original bill of sale, dated July 17, 1871, is remarkable. From this document, the original owner, a Mrs. Cobby, also of New York, is known, as is the original price of the cabinet, $307.50. Mrs. Cobby probably used the cabinet in her parlor to display sculpture and decorative art objects of the type she could have found in the showrooms of Tiffany and Company. While Christian Herter called this piece a "rosewood gilt inlaid cabinet" on the bill of sale, the primary function of such a piece was to exhibit items rather than to store them. Not only was the cabinet's design well-suited to the presentation of a small sculpture group, perhaps of the muses or other classical characters, it also, by virtue of the three rectangular front panels, proved an ideal vehicle for showcasing the decorative painting and marquetry skills advertised on Herter Brothers' billhead.

The cabinet's decoration can best be termed "Owenesque," after Owen Jones, the author of Grammar of Ornament, first published in London in 1856. In his book, Jones summarized the decorative motifs of the world's cultures, using one page of brilliantly colored designs for each. Acanthus leaves, associated with Egypt, are carved and gilded in a frieze around the top of the cabinet shown here and inlaid in the panel of the central section. The pedestal and vase marquetry decoration on the central panel serves as a metaphor for the cabinet's intended function and introduces classical shapes of urn, vase, and column. Outlining the doors of the side sections are intricate marquetry borders, identical in design to the skirt border of a Herter Brothers table in the collection of the Toledo Museum of Art, Ohio, but composed of different woods. Five different woods were used to create the inlaid decorations on this cabinet. The ornamental painting on the side panels is more naturalistic than the inlaid or incised decoration and introduces an element of trompe l'oeil. Here, butterflies and vines of flowers (which echo the stylized borders of vines outlining the doors) emerge from simulated panels that are actually painted on the doors. The unusual combination of marquetry and decorative painting, and the survival of the original bill of sale render this cabinet a unique example of a popular Victorian style.

WNH and KB


REFERENCES

Doreen Bolger Burke et al. In Pursuit of Beauty: Americans and the Aesthetic Movement. Ex. cat. Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1986. Pp. 438-40.

Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art (May 1987): 193-202.

Frank Donegan. "Mid-Victorian Furniture." Americana, July-August 1990, pp. 62-64.

American and European Furniture and Decorative Arts. Auction cat. Butterfield and Butterfield, Los Angeles, CA, March 1991, sale 4524V.

Katherine S. Howe, Alice Cooney Frelinghuysen, and Catherine Hoover Voorsanger, eds. Herter Brothers: Furniture and Interiors of a Gilded Age. Ex. cat. Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, 1994.