Portraits and Artifacts
Visitors to Antiquarian Hall and other AAS buildings are
generally surprised by the array of antique furniture, artifacts,
and portraits. The furniture includes some fine American and
English antiques, including John Hancock's double chair, tall
clock, and desk that are housed in the Council Room. Another piece
favored by American scholars is the high chair used by descendants
of Richard Mather, including Cotton Mather. Much of the furniture
in the administrative offices has some interest to collectors or
admirers of American antiques. An unusual aspect of this
collection is the number of working antique clocks, including a
Willard banjo clock and a David Wood shelf clock. The most
recently acquired example was a gift of Kenneth D. Roberts; it is
a clock made in Worcester by Samuel Stowel in 1773 as his
apprenticeship piece. The clocks keep our staff and readers alert
with hourly chimes. An article on some of the most important
pieces in the collection was written by Wendell D. Garrett for The
Magazine Antiques (March 1970).
Artifacts include two wooden busts of John Winthrop and Voltaire,
carved by the Salem architect Samuel McIntire, a vial of tea
collected after the Boston Tea Party in 1773, silver from the
family of Isaiah Thomas, miscellaneous pieces of silver and china,
some of which is used at public functions, and the Emma DeForest
Morse collection of American Historical Pottery. This collection
of 324 pieces of nineteenth-century Staffordshire pottery
illustrates major sites in the United States and commemorates
events in this nation's past.
Two other artifacts in the collection are Col.
William Henshaw's musket dating from the American Revolution and a
sword that once belonged to Fitz-John Winthrop, the governor of
Connecticut, which descended through the Winthrop family to the
Society.
The collection of oil portraits is displayed throughout
Antiquarian Hall. The Society has never actively acquired paintings,
except for portraits of presidents of the Society. Over the years,
however, a significant collection has been formed. Several
portraits of eminent members of the Mather family are present
(including two portraits of Cotton Mather and one of Mather Byles,
Sr., by Peter Pelham), four portraits by the itinerant artist Ethan
Allen Greenwood, and Mather Brown's self-portrait. The collection
of oil paintings, as well as the miniatures, the sculpted portrait
busts, and a few framed drawings are described in Frederick L.
Weis's checklist in volume 56 of the Proceedings (1946).
Since that time portraits of Timothy Swan, Benjamin Chapin, John
Moore, Stephen Peabody, members of the Goddard family, and Samuel
Sewall, a painting of the Hongs at Canton, and American
landscapes and genre paintings have entered the collection. An article by
Louisa
Dresser on the collection was published in The Magazine Antiques
in November 1969. The Society's portraits are included in two Smithsonian
Institution
databases, the Catalogue of American Portraits and the Bicentennial
Inventory of American Paintings. A new catalog
of the collection, Portraits in the
Collection of the American
Antiquarian Society, compiled by Lauren B. Hewes, was published
by AAS
in 2004.
- Georgia B. Barnhill, Andrew W. Mellon Curator of Graphic Arts
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Tea collected after the Boston Tea Party in 1773
The Staffordshire China Collection features pieces with views of
America. Views such as the Court House and the Alms House in Boston
preserve views of buildings that are no longer extant or have been
radically altered. Many of the views are based on prints in the AAS
collection. It was the gift of Emma Deforest Morse of Worcester in 1913.
For current information on the cataloging status of this and
other AAS collections, choose "Collection Access" below.
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